Government budget policy: traffic lights playing cones

2024-01-04 22:17:30

It doesn’t get any more confusing, solid budget policy looks different. At the start of the new year, the traffic light coalition is withdrawing a further 2.5 billion euros of its hard-finding “savings decisions” from December – in order to appease the farmers who are protesting against the reduction of a small part of their subsidies and to accommodate the industry hit by the plastic levy.

Farmers should continue to be exempt from vehicle tax, and the subsidies for agricultural diesel should just be phased out. The industry will not have to raise the 1.4 billion euros for the plastic levy until 2025. The announced kerosene tax for aviation, which was replaced before Christmas by the plan to instead increase the ticket tax – which the government actually wanted to abolish shortly before – had an even shorter shelf life than the planned cuts in state aid for farmers.

Maybe the traffic lights will add more?

The back and forth over the 17 billion euros that need to be raised for a constitutionally compliant budget for 2024 makes the SPD, Greens and FDP seem like dubious shell players. This impression is supported by statements by the government spokesman, according to which there is new scope through updated economic and budget data in the federal budget. No wonder that the farmers want to demonstrate despite the partial reversal of their burdens.

A government that is so unconvinced of its own policies that it collapses at the first headwind may be able to wrest further concessions. Maybe the traffic light, in its heedlessness, will end up adding money for the farmers who have now been hit by the flood?

Dietrich Creutzburg, Berlin Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 25 Anne Kokenbrink Published/Updated: Recommendations: 15 Published/Updated: , Recommendations: 14

This government is also learning the hard way: subsidies are introduced faster than they are eliminated. A coalition can only succeed in withdrawing state aid if everyone agrees and defends well-prepared decisions together. But the traffic light’s supply of common ground seems to have been used up in budget policy, as the SPD and Greens’ constant shaking of the debt brake shows. There is not much left of the authority of Finance Minister Christian Lindner. This shouldn’t just worry the FDP.