Finance Minister Lindner and Economics Minister Habeck write letters to each other. In the letters that have become public, they argue about which areas in the upcoming draft budget money can be spent on - and how that should be financed. Chancellor Scholz is now setting the direction.
According to a magazine report, when preparing the budget for next year, the traffic light coalition agreed to do without tax increases and to comply with the debt brake. According to information from "Spiegel", Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Finance Minister Christian Lindner agreed on this at a meeting on Monday.
The federal government did not confirm this directly. "I cannot confirm that because I was not present at the meeting," said Deputy Government Spokesman Wolfgang Büchner. However, he would not be surprised "because it is simply the framework that we gave ourselves in the coalition agreement". Scholz had thus sided with Lindner in the budget dispute between the two ministers, the magazine continued. According to the report, the Federal Minister of Finance is planning new debt of at least 25 billion euros for the coming year.
In doing so, he wants to make full use of the maximum limit allowed by the debt brake. According to the latest calculations by the Ministry of Finance, the amount is 15 billion euros. In addition, there would be 10 billion euros for the planned share pension, which does not count for the debt brake because they are offset by a claim on the pension fund in the same amount.
Habeck and Lindner had settled their dispute over the 2024 budget by letter, and the letters from the two were leaked to the public. "We ask you not to make any further public or internal preliminary decisions that unilaterally prioritize further spending," said Habeck in a letter to the FDP leader. He expressly named the areas of share pensions, the armed forces and sales tax reduction for the catering trade "representing the ministries led by the Greens". For counter-financing, Habeck suggested "improving income" by reducing environmentally harmful subsidies. Lindner rejected the initiative, pointing out that the FDP was not prepared to accept any tax increases.
