2024-08-16 21:23:51
He is actually still on vacation, but he apparently did not want to stand by and watch any longer: Olaf Scholz is positioning himself in the new budget dispute of the traffic light coalition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has intervened in the new budget dispute of his traffic light government from his vacation. In doing so, he contradicts his Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), albeit indirectly – and clearly sides with the SPD and the Greens in the dispute over the interpretation of expert reports.
“It made sense to have the federal government’s options for action examined by an expert as to how Deutsche Bahn and the motorways could be financially strengthened in the budget,” Scholz told the news portal “Zeit Online”. “The clear result of the legal opinion: It can be done.”
The federal government will now discuss the next steps in confidence, Scholz said, adding: “It remains a mystery how the actually clear opinion of the legal opinion could temporarily be interpreted in a fundamentally wrong way.”
This sentence can be read as a sarcastic dig from Scholz against his finance minister. Where this interpretation came from is very clear: from Lindner’s ministry.
As agreed, Lindner had commissioned a legal and an economic report as part of the budget agreement. It was essentially intended to evaluate three tricks that the traffic light coalition wanted to use to close a remaining eight billion euro gap.
The reports unanimously and clearly reject the idea of using the unused 4.9 billion euros from the state development bank KfW for the gas price brake in the budget for other purposes. The reports considered it fundamentally possible to give the railway money without having to meet the debt brake. Lindner’s office spoke out in favor of giving it 3.6 billion euros as equity.
The main point of controversy was the plan to also provide Autobahn GmbH with money in the form of a loan that would not be counted towards the debt brake. Lindner’s scientific advisory board did not consider this possible in its report. The lawyer commissioned did in principle consider it possible – but without any major risk only if Autobahn GmbH was also allowed to generate its own income in the future.
Last Thursday, Lindner’s office immediately drew its own political conclusion on the basis of these reports. And in the case of Autobahn GmbH, unlike Scholz’s current conclusion, the bottom line was: That’s not possible.
As a result, the Ministry of Finance said, “there is no possibility of establishing the legal basis for a viable decision on the question of a loan to Autobahn GmbH in time for an estimate to be included in the 2025 federal budget.”
The Finance Ministry also made suggestions as to how the gap of 4.4 billion euros could be closed. With “further consolidation contributions” in the “consumption sector”, i.e. savings measures. From the Ministry’s point of view, this would also be welcome in social spending.
On Sunday, Lindner went even further in the ZDF “Summer Interview”. He spoke of a gap of five billion euros and said: “I once agreed to a coalition compromise that was shaky and that was rejected by Karlsruhe. That won’t happen to me a second time.”
The SPD in particular was furious. Leader Saskia Esken called Lindner’s obviously uncoordinated actions “reckless” and “indecent”. For her, it exceeded “the limits of what is tolerable in a coalition”. Green Party deputy Andreas Audretsch objected above all to the austerity ideas of Lindner’s people. “We cannot afford to cut costs to the point of ruin,” Audretsch told t-online. “That will not happen with us.”