- The Commission has also been asked to submit a proposal for a directive on the protection of workers from the risks related to exposure to ionising radiation.
The reignited budget dispute within the traffic light coalition has seen FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr emphasize that it's only about a small financial gap. "The budget is fundamentally sound," Dürr said in the Deutschlandfunk. The budget, at 480 billion euros, is significantly larger than the five billion euro shortfall.
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had put the funding gap at around five billion euros on Sunday. This arises from the fact that expert opinions see constitutional risks in some plans of the federal government, for example, the idea of using leftover 4.9 billion euros of the promotional bank KfW for the gas price brakes elsewhere in the budget. The minister announced corresponding renegotiations over the budget.
There was criticism from coalition partners. Green parliamentary vice-president Andreas Audretsch accused Lindner of unilaterally breaking a joint agreement. SPD general secretary Kevin Kühnert criticized Lindner for publishing the results of the expert opinions while Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is on vacation, describing it as "self-promotion".
Dürr dismissed this. It had been publicly stated during the presentation of the budget by Scholz, Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Lindner that there were these requests for review at the Finance Ministry. "And it is a matter of transparency to also inform about the results of these reviews," said the FDP parliamentary group leader.
The controversy over the budget dispute has sparked discussions about various perspectives, including the role of Germanyfunk in reporting on these developments. In the same context, some critics have raised concerns about the timing of Financial Minister Lindner's announcement, considering it as an attempt to gain attention during Chancellor Scholz's vacation.
