German Government Postpones Approval Of 2024 Budget
Germany’s government has postponed approval of the 2024 budget, the parliamentary group leaders of the three coalition parties said on Wednesday.
The decision comes in the wake of a court ruling that struck down a government plan to spend €60 billion ($66 billion) originally intended to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic on climate policy instead.
The budget will not be put to a vote in the coming week’s parliamentary session, the group leaders of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) jointly announced.
“Our aim is to discuss the budget swiftly but with due care in order to create planning security,” they said.
They gave no indication as to whether a budget decision could still be reached this year.
There is one more regular session of parliament before the end of the year. With a shortened deadline in the upper house of parliament, or Bundesrat, a resolution would theoretically still be possible, but unlikely, according to the coalition.
If there is no budget at the beginning of the year, only expenditure that is necessary to maintain the administration and fulfil legal obligations is possible for the time being.
In practice, however, the Finance Ministry can authorize the ministries to use a certain percentage of the funds in the draft budget that has not yet been approved each month.
The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe last week ruled that the government may not reserve emergency loans for later years. Instead, an emergency situation must be declared anew each year.
According to experts, this not only has an impact on planned investments from the Climate and Transformation Fund, but also on the special fund for energy price brakes. This year, €37 billion have already been paid out from this fund that were not actually available.
“We believe it is necessary to carefully consider this judgement when drawing up the budget for 2024,” the coalition parties said.
The budget week will therefore be cancelled and other topics will be put on the agenda for next week’s Bundestag session instead.
Credit:DPA
