Finance Minister Christian Lindner has had the tricks devised with the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor to plug the billion-dollar gap in the budget legally examined. Doubts were raised – and renegotiations took place. SPD leader Esken countered sharply.
Jena. And the marmot greets you every day: Once again the traffic light coalition ‘s house blessing is going wrong. The agreement on a budget bill, which Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz SPD leader Esken, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) painstakingly worked out in 80 hours of painstaking work, lasted less than three weeks. After an offer from the Ministry of Finance on Thursday for renegotiations, SPD leader Saskia Esken launched a counterattack on Friday. She accuses Lindner of reckless and unbearable actions.
Esken – currently on a political summer trip through Saxony and Thuringia, where new state parliaments will be elected on September 1st – had to pull herself together before commenting on it. She declined to respond quickly on Thursday. Also because there was something even more important that day: the spectacular prisoner exchange with the so-called Tiergarten murderer, who was imprisoned in Germany, against the US journalist Evan Gershkovich, who was held hostage in Russia, as well as other prisoners on both sides.
Esken: Lindner is “ruthless”
But even after she slept on it for a night, her announcement to Lindner on Friday was sharp. “The assessment of the report on possible ways of preparing the budget, which the Finance Minister published yesterday, is also idiosyncratic from a technical point of view,” she explains. And adds: “The fact that he makes this assessment without any vote in the government and makes it public on a day that should have been marked by the release of numerous people who were unjustly imprisoned by Vladimir Putin – that is reckless and transgressive For me, this is the limit of what is tolerable in a coalition.”
Now what does that mean? Will the coalition collapse after all? In any case, the traffic light continues where it left off before the parliamentary summer break. With argument. Just like the year before. And before. At his summer press conference last week, Scholz was still unshakable – SPD leader Esken or should we say: incorrigible? – showed optimism that the budget gap would soon be closed.
Traffic light budget dispute: Coalition must renegotiate the 2025 federal budget
The traffic light coalition’s budget drama is still not over. Experts consider several projects to be questionable.
Vice SPD parliamentary group leader Post: “Debt rule is too rigid and inflexible”
The only question now is how? Lindner has declared the debt brake a shrine. He won’t loosen her up. The SPD leader Esken and the Greens, on the other hand, keep tinkering with it. The SPD leader Esken had also stated that if the money could not be raised through savings or reallocations for the 2025 budget, the “exceeding resolution” would have to be made. This means that the new debt would be higher than the debt brake anchored in the Basic Law allows. But the suspension of the debt brake is also anchored in the Basic Law, argue the two coalition partners SPD leader Esken and the Greens.
Esken is annoyed that the Ministry of Finance is simply talking about renegotiations without having reached an amicable agreement with Scholz and Habeck. The misery continues.