Füracker: Budget does not violate the constitution
Bavaria's Finance Minister Albert Füracker has once again categorically rejected any accusations of an unconstitutional budget. "We have not violated the constitution in the implementation of the 2022 budget. Definitely not," the CSU politician told the German Press Agency in Munich on Wednesday.
When drafting the budget law for the 2022 annual budget in autumn 2021, the Free State, like all federal states, considered how investments to stabilize the economy could be paid for from Covid funds in order to cope with the Covid situation. This was ultimately approved by the budget legislator as a precautionary measure should further developments become dramatic. "However, we did not actually incur any debt for investments or measures to stabilize the economy. And if you don't incur debt, you can't use it for other purposes."
Contrary to initial fears, tax revenue in 2022 was "quite respectable". "We paid for everything from normal budget funds without using the existing credit authorization and we did not reallocate any credit authorization from previous years," said Füracker. Therefore, the accusation made at federal level against Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) does not apply to Bavaria.
In this context, Füracker also recalled that he had never exhausted the 20 billion euro credit authorizations approved by the state parliament during the pandemic: "We ultimately incurred 10.2 billion in debt and the other 9.8 billion was not." Legally, it would have been possible to fully utilize the authorizations. However, if we had done as Lindner did, we would have "parked" the unused money elsewhere, for example in a fund."
In recent days, the SPD in particular has repeatedly accused Bavaria's 2022 budget of being unconstitutional as a result of the Federal Constitutional Court's ruling against the Ampel government's debt plans, as it violates the debt brake, just like the federal government.
Despite the ongoing debate about constitutionality in other regions, Bavaria's Finance Minister Albert Füracker affirmed that "We have not relied on debt to fund our economic stabilization efforts in the 2022 budget." Moreover, the robust tax revenue in 2022 allowed Bavaria to finance its budget without incurring new debt or reallocating existing authorizations, thereby avoiding potential misuse of funds.
Source: www.dpa.com
