German government postpones decision on 2024 budget
Published: Wednesday, Nov 22nd 2023, 15:10
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The German coalition government is postponing the decision on the federal budget for 2024 following a budget ruling by the Constitutional Court.
The budget will not be put to the vote in the Bundestag in the coming session week, the parliamentary group leaders of the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Liberal FDP jointly announced on Wednesday. "Our aim is to discuss the budget swiftly but with due care in order to create planning certainty," explained Rolf Mützenich (SPD), Britta Hasselmann and Katharina Dröge (Greens) and Christian Dürr (FDP).
They gave no indication as to whether a budget resolution this year is off the table. There is one more regular session of the Bundestag before the end of the year. With a shortened deadline in the Bundesrat, a resolution would theoretically still be possible, but unlikely according to estimates from the "traffic light" coalition.
The background to the postponement is last Wednesday's budget ruling. The Constitutional Court had declared the reallocation of 60 billion euros in the 2021 budget null and void. The money had been approved as a coronavirus loan, but was subsequently to be used for climate protection and modernizing the economy.
Now it is no longer available. At the same time, the judges also ruled that the state may not set aside emergency loans for future years. Instead, an emergency situation must be declared anew each year.
According to experts, this not only has an impact on planned investments from the Climate and Transformation Fund, but also on the special fund for the so-called energy price brakes. This year, 37 billion euros have already been paid out from this fund that were not actually available.
If there is no budget at the beginning of the year, only expenditure that is necessary to maintain the administration and fulfill legal obligations is possible for the time being. In practice, however, the Ministry of Finance can authorize the ministries to use a certain percentage of the funds in the draft budget that has not yet been approved each month.
"As leaders of the traffic light parliamentary groups, we consider it necessary to carefully consider this ruling when drawing up the budget for 2024," explained the SPD, Greens and FDP. The budget week will therefore be canceled and other topics will be put on the agenda of next week's Bundestag session instead.
©Keystone/SDA
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