Coalition continues to struggle over 2024 budget

Coalition continues to struggle over 2024 budget - Lindner draws red lines

The discussions have been taking place for days in a small circle around Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). They have to bridge the differing positions of the coalition partners on the question of how the gap in the 2024 budget can be filled. The SPD and Greens once again want to suspend the debt brake in order to be able to take out more loans. The FDP, on the other hand, is pushing for savings.

Lindner reiterated his demand for savings to the ARD capital city studio. He criticized the "appetite" for more and more money: "We have enough money. We just need to make better use of the money we have." He rejected calls for tax increases and a change in the rules for the debt brake.

"You can't declare the emergency situation to be normality," he said in response to the question of softening the debt brake rule. Lindner was sceptical about a renewed suspension of the debt brake for the 2024 budget: "I don't yet know of any arguments that would convince me."

Green Party leader Ricarda Lang said that she expected the coalition to make a decision on the budget "very, very soon". The aim is to prevent a "national crisis" and to show that "we can do this together and stick together as a government".

The Green Party leader called on the government partners to be willing to compromise: "Right now, it's not about who can ultimately say this is a green dot, this is a yellow dot or a red dot." It is important that things are fair, Lang said on Bayern 2 radio.

Meanwhile, the debate about the increase in the citizen's allowance at the turn of the year continued. Lindner criticized it once again - although a change to the increase that has already been legally approved seems out of the question. The Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced that it would no longer be technically possible to waive the increase at short notice. "The payment processes are already underway," a spokesperson for the employment agency told the Funke Mediengruppe newspapers.

The basis for calculating the increase in the citizen's allowance is laid down by law and the exact increase is set by the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs every year by the end of October. Due to the budget crisis, the CDU and FDP recently called for the citizen's allowance not to be increased by twelve percent in January as planned.

The chairman of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Christian Dürr, called for a zero increase for the following year in view of the 2024 increase in the Citizen's Income. "Anything else would send the wrong signal," he told Bild on Wednesday. Dürr called for "a fundamental discussion within the coalition about the method of calculating the citizen's income".

The CDU/CSU called on the coalition to "urgently" revise the citizen's income in the short term. "The cost of social benefits is shooting through the roof," said Thorsten Frei (CDU), parliamentary secretary of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, to the Rheinische Post newspaper. "Almost 45 percent of the federal budget is spent on social benefits." The Citizen's Income would have the effect of a "shutdown bonus for some recipients, if only because of its amount".