Greens demand abolition of the company car privilege
There is still no agreement on the 2024 federal budget in the traffic light coalition. The Greens are calling for an end to the dispute by New Year's Eve. To save money, they want to tax company cars more heavily.
The traffic light coalition is still discussing how it can achieve a constitutionally sound budget for next year. Andreas Audretsch, deputy parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, has now made a further proposal. He is calling for the abolition of the company car privilege to ease the burden on the budget. "That would be a total of around 1.8 billion euros that could be saved in this area," Audretsch told "ntv Frühstart". The main beneficiaries of the tax relief would be people with large cars, which cause major environmental damage. "That doesn't make sense at this time."
Audretsch spoke out in favor of the coalition reaching an agreement in the dispute over the 2024 budget by the end of the year. "It is very important that we find a solution quickly now, because we realize that the whole of Germany is waiting for a solution." No matter where he looks - at the battery factory in the north, chip production in the east or the steel workers in Saarland - results are rightly expected everywhere, said the Green politician. Whether prosperity, climate protection and good jobs could be brought together in the future depended on the investments made by the German government. "The task now is to secure this."
Declaring an emergency situation for next year and continuing to suspend the debt brake could also be part of the solution, said Audretsch. The coalition must now clarify in the negotiations whether it can work without this step. The CDU-led state government in Schleswig-Holstein, for example, had already declared an emergency situation for 2023 and 2024, while Saxony-Anhalt was aiming for the same. CDU party chairman Friedrich Merz, on the other hand, is running a dubious campaign against the poorest people in the country with his proposals for cuts in the social sector, said Audretsch. "That is what is causing discord in society." Audretsch praised the employee wing of the CDU/CSU, which had contradicted Merz. "Friedrich Merz is really getting fire from his own party and that's good."
The Green parliamentary group deputy reacted calmly to the Federal Audit Office's critical assessment of the supplementary budget for 2023. In the end, the Ampel will pass something "that corresponds one-to-one with the requirements of the Federal Constitutional Court", said Audretsch. The debt brake would be suspended again and an emergency situation declared in order to deal seriously with the current year's budget. The Court of Audit had called the supplementary budget "extremely problematic" because the federal government was continuing to circumvent the core budget with special debt pots.
Read also:
- TheGreen Party's Andreas Audretsch, in the traffic light coalition, proposes abolishing the company car privilege as a cost-saving measure, which is estimated to save approximately 1.8 billion euros.
- Criticizing CDU party chairman Friedrich Merz, Audretsch commends the employee wing of the CDU/CSU for challenging Merz's proposals to cut social sector funding, which he views as causing societal discord.
- Following the Federal Audit Office's criticism of the supplementary budget for 2023, Audretsch remains optimistic that the Ampel coalition will still pass a budget that meets the requirements of the Federal Constitutional Court, including suspending the debt brake and declaring an emergency situation.
Source: www.ntv.de
