- EU politicians: funding gap for 2025 even bigger
The Union considers the calculations of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for the budget in 2025 unrealistic. The financing gap is "larger than the five billion euros claimed by Christian Lindner," said Deputy Parliamentary Group Leader Mathias Middelberg (CDU) to the German Press Agency. "In fact, after subtracting a capital increase for the railway of up to 3.6 billion euros, 13.4 billion euros still need to be financed from the remaining 17 billion euros," he calculated.
Lindner's expectation that eight to nine billion euros would not be spent is unrealistic. Given the current shrinking economic development, increased spending, especially in the social sector, is to be expected. This can already be seen in the draft for the supplementary budget 2024, where alone 3.7 billion euros are provided for "massively increasing expenditures in citizen's money," said Middelberg.
Lindner wants to renegotiate
Lindner had publicly announced on Sunday in an interview that expert opinions see constitutional risks in some plans of the federal government - for example, in the idea of using the remaining 4.9 billion euros of the promotional bank KfW for the gas price brakes elsewhere in the budget. Accordingly, one must renegotiate the budget.
Loud criticism came from the SPD - mainly that Lindner did not inform the coalition partners SPD and Greens about the content of the expert opinions before his interview statement.
"The Ampel squabble is not a funny summer theater, but is significantly harming the economic development in Germany," said Middelberg. The deputy chairman of the Union faction accused the coalition partners of causing uncertainty regarding the budget, as well as funding programs and public investments, which is destroying the trust of consumers and private investors. He said: "If the Ampel does not end its quarrel very quickly and credibly, the decline of the German economy will really pick up speed."
The SPD expressed critical remarks towards Lindner, focusing on his failure to inform the coalition partners about the expert opinions before his interview statement regarding the budget. The SPD joined the chorus of loud criticism, emphasizing that the coalition's squabbles are negatively impacting the economic development in Germany.
