Budget: Kühnert warns Lindner against “nationalist tongue-lashing”

SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert sharply criticized statements by Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) on development cooperation. “Lindner may have found that funny, but I can only warn him against justifying his savings goals with such an ultimately nationalistic tongue-lashing,” Kühnert told the news portal “T-Online”. Lindner thus serves a worldview according to which humanitarian aid and development cooperation are merely gifts that can be given to the world in good times.

In the debate about the 2025 federal budget, Lindner said that the spending wishes of individual ministries were like “Christmas, Easter and birthdays together”. He particularly referred to the departments with commitments abroad. The announcement was primarily aimed at Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), whose estimates for their individual budgets for 2025 are each around two billion euros above their targets. With a view to development cooperation, Lindner warned that it was no longer possible to finance every cycle path in Peru with German tax money.

Kühnert reacted indignantly. “We can’t complain on Sundays that we don’t have enough geopolitical weight compared to Russia and China, only to slash development cooperation with populist fanfare on Mondays,” he said. “This is about our strategic interests in the world and not about charity.” Lindner probably knows that development projects also have strategic effects, just as he knows that the development budget only makes up a fraction of the overall budget. “But he also knows about the vulnerability of international aid and uses it unabashedly.”