The Chancellor and his Finance Minister draw different conclusions from reports on the budget. Now the Union has intervened and said: The way Scholz is dealing with Lindner is unacceptable.
The Union faction is calling on the FDP to leave the traffic light coalition in the dispute over the federal budget. The reason for this is statements by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), who draws different conclusions from legal opinions on the 2025 budget than Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP). Scholz had complained to “Zeit Online” that the actually clear vote of the legal opinion had been “temporarily interpreted in a fundamentally wrong way”.
He did not mention Lindner – but for the Union it is nevertheless clear: “A Chancellor who publicly denies his finance minister his competences and treats him like a schoolboy is a unique event.” Union budget politician Christian Haase told the “Rheinische Post” that the incident illustrates the coalition’s disunity. At the same time, it shows “that a Chancellor is at the head of our country who has learned nothing from the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling on the 2021 supplementary budget and who wants to continue to place himself above constitutional law.”
The background to this are three measures that were intended to reduce the funding gap in the budget for the coming year by a total of eight billion euros. Lindner had these scientifically evaluated due to legal and economic concerns. The result: The concerns were partially confirmed, but legal expert Johannes Hellermann also showed ways in which at least two of the three measures could be implemented.
The Finance Ministry then said that there were still concerns about the economic viability. In addition, the necessary legal changes could not be implemented in time before a budget decision. Scholz sees things differently. The federal government will now discuss the next steps in confidence.
Source: Stern
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