No agreement on the budget: "It will take as long as it takes"
Kevin Kühnert no longer expects a breakthrough in the budget dispute before tomorrow's SPD federal party conference, but certainly expects an agreement to be reached before Christmas. And if not? "Then we'll keep talking," says the General Secretary.
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert expects the budget crisis to be resolved before Christmas. "That would make sense. I believe it is also possible. But it will take as long as it takes," he said on ntv's "Frühstart". If an agreement is not reached before the holidays, "then we will keep talking", said the Secretary General.
On Friday, the SPD will meet in Berlin for a three-day federal party conference. He acknowledged the current polls, which, like the RTL/ntv trend barometer, put the governing coalition together at just 33 percent. "Of course I'm not happy with these figures, especially now, even though a party conference is coming up. But there's no point in complaining about it now, we have to get out of it," said Kühnert. "Drawing up a budget for 2024 is the first step."
Kühnert spoke out against reducing or completely withdrawing the increase in citizens' contributions planned for January. "Be careful on the platform edge, if we ever let this be torn down, that with reference to the current inflation it is said that nothing has to go up here, then we will look around at the next collective bargaining for employees, at the next pension increase on July 1 of next year."
The government and the opposition agreed at the end of last year to introduce a mechanism to promptly track inflation in the Citizen's Income. "That's exactly what's happening now," says Kühnert. If this is not done, "then many millions of employees and pensioners in Germany will look stupid".
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The budgetary policy standoff between the government and SPD hasn't resulted in an agreement as yet, according to ntv's "Early Start". Kevin Kühnert, the SPD's General Secretary, mentioned on the same program that the Traffic Light Coalition might strive for a resolution before the Christmas break, emphasizing, "We'll keep talking" if not.
Source: www.ntv.de
