Bundestag: After expert opinion: Union expresses constitutional doubts about budget

At the start of the budget week in the Bundestag, the Union expressed considerable constitutional doubts about the draft budget of the traffic light coalition. “There is both a considerable financial and legal risk,” said budget officer Christian Haase. “The budget balance is being tricked into being in order to survive the legislative period and not to endanger one’s own pet projects, no matter how many budget principles are violated in the process.”

According to Haase, this is confirmed by a report commissioned by the Union from constitutional lawyer Hanno Kube, which was first reported by the “Rheinische Post”. The paper, which is also available to the German Press Agency, states, among other things, that the so-called global underspending is set at an above-average level of twelve billion euros. The federal government is thus betting that the ministries will not spend twelve billion of the billions to which they are entitled anyway, for example because projects are delayed or funding is not claimed. This happens again and again – but the sum is “well above past experience,” writes Kube.

The constitutional lawyer also bases his doubts on the planned booking of equity injections and loans to the railway outside the debt brake. The assumptions about the development of the labor market and thus the expenditure on citizens’ allowances are also questionable. The planned global additional revenue of around 6.9 billion euros also raises constitutional doubts. Here the federal government assumes that the planned growth initiative will lead to more tax revenue – but the actual effect of the measures is still unclear.