2024-04-19 03:38:20
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr is angry with the Union. The most important reason: their vague attitude towards the debt brake. Dürr is therefore making a tough announcement to party and parliamentary group leader Merz.
For a long time, the Union and the FDP were considered almost natural partners, and they ruled the country together for decades. There is traditionally a lot of agreement, especially in economic and financial policy; here the Liberals usually share more with Friedrich Merz, Markus Söder and Co. than with their coalition partners SPD and Greens.
Actually. Because now a break is emerging at exactly this point, as can be seen in the statements of some Union politicians – and as FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr is now criticizing in a tough reckoning in an interview with t-online. His biggest annoyance: the constant new attempts from the Union to reform the debt brake, which CDU boss Friedrich Merz has actually ruled out.
“As a coalition, we are working to bring our economy forward again,” Dürr told t-online. “The direction the Union is taking makes me very worried.” With a view to the Union’s criticism of the recently reached compromise on the climate protection law, Dürr said that politicians from the CDU wanted to further promote “planned climate protection”.
CDU state politicians openly against Merz’s course
What he means by this accusation: The Union wants to go back to the original climate protection law, which it passed together with the SPD in the previous legislative period. It stipulated that individual climate sectors, such as buildings or transport, had to achieve their own climate targets. If that doesn’t work, the ministries responsible for the sector have had to take immediate measures instead of – as the traffic light now wants – looking at climate emissions as a whole, which allows the government to save CO₂ elsewhere.
But that’s not all that annoys Dürr about the Union’s current course. In addition, there are the repeated spikes from the Union against the debt brake. The Liberals want to preserve the debt brake in its current form and, after repeated statements by their party leader Merz, believe the Conservatives are on their side.
However, not everyone in the party apparently sees it that way, as Dürr criticizes: “The deputy CDU chairwoman Prien and the Berlin mayor Wegner want to abolish the debt brake – the Berlin government is even seeking a Federal Council initiative for this.”
“Friedrich Merz should put a stop to this quickly”
In addition, there is more and more “excessive bureaucracy and regulation coming from Brussels from EU Commission President von der Leyen,” also with the CDU party list. Dürr’s bitter conclusion including an appeal to Merz: “The Union is on a dangerous left-wing course that would weaken our economy. Friedrich Merz should quickly put a stop to this.”
In fact, the Union presents a divided picture, especially in the discussion about the debt brake. While Merz and top politicians in the Bundestag faction always speak out against reforming or suspending the debt rule, state politicians – much to Merz’s displeasure – take a different tone.
In addition to the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, who announced a corresponding Federal Council initiative to reform the debt brake on Monday, Karin Prien, Education Minister in Schleswig-Holstein, who was addressed by Dürr, recently distanced herself from the party leadership.
In the podcast of the news portal “Table Media” Prien said: “I think at the end of a savings process the debt brake will have to be corrected according to the suggestions of the Council of Experts.” Both Wegner and Prien cite the reason that state budgets are under greater pressure than the federal government. The CDU Prime Ministers of Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt, Boris Rhein and Reiner Haseloff, took a similar position.
The FDP, meanwhile, is against any proposal to change the debt brake. In an interview with t-online, the party’s general secretary, Bijan Djir-Sarai, said on Tuesday: “The debt brake is an inflation brake, it is also anchored in the constitution and it only allows suspension within a very narrow framework, for example due to sudden natural disasters. “