To face the coronavirus pandemic, the German Parliament authorized the government earlier this year to request loans for an amount of 240.2 billion euros, a record in a country accustomed to budget sobriety.
However, Berlin will not need to use all these funds, which were intended to finance business aid and partial unemployment insurance, despite the country facing an increase in cases.
Thus, the government of the new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, wants to use this ‘surplus’ money to invest it in the energy transition and the digitization of the German economy.
A revised financing project will be presented for this purpose next Monday during the Council of Ministers, Lindner said at a press conference.
The first steps of this adept at budget orthodoxy at the head of the Ministry of Finance are in the spotlight, since public spending was one of the sticking points in the negotiations to form the coalition cabinet.
Its social democratic partners, and especially the environmentalists, advocate greater budgetary flexibility and have one of their priorities in massive investments, essential for Germany to “decarbonise” and digitize its economy.
This € 60 billion plan will be “a stimulus to the national economy,” Lindner promised.
The goal is also to inflate the new spending amounts as high as possible before returning to budget discipline, which the coalition plans to start in 2023.
The “debt brake” enshrined in the German Constitution requires the government not to borrow more than 0.35% of GDP each year.
Source From: Ambito
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