Every year, billions in investment funds for schools, roads and digitization are left unused in Germany. That frustrated Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD). "This is increasing year by year," said the vice-chancellor of the "Rheinische Post". "That's more than 15 billion euros in the budget by now."
The finance minister called on states, municipalities and investors: "Please take the money!" There would be enough unused funds at the federal level. At the same time, Scholz announced that it would simplify the decision-making process so that the funds could be retrieved more easily. From the construction industry and from the municipalities there had previously been criticism, among other things, about too cumbersome application procedures (read more on SPIEGEL +).
He asked his cabinet colleagues to revise the rules, Scholz said. "It can not be that investing has become so complicated."
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The money should really drain
More specifically than in the interview Scholz was on Saturday at a regional conference of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia Kamen: It was about simplifying the funding guidelines, he said there, so that "you do not have two years to write an application." The funds for public investment have been massively increased.
The worst thing that could happen now, if it ran like the climate fund, in social housing or in the means for municipal investment, Scholz said: "The money does not drain." You have to change that. The Finance Minister himself explained the current situation with lack of planning capacity and too much bureaucracy, but also with missing construction workers.
Demand for construction workers could continue to rise
The Zentralverband des Deutschen Handwerks (ZDH) referred on Saturday to recent statements by craftsman Hans Peter Wollseifer, according to which many roofers, masons, plumbers, painters and tilers are currently heavily used because of the construction boom. This will foreseeably remain so until the end of the year.
The demand is expected to increase even more than off, wollseifer had said the magazine "Bella". He also criticized the quality of public tenders in the "Bonner General-Anzeiger".
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities turned against the impression in the newspapers of the "Funke Mediengruppe" that funds would simply not be called up by the municipalities. Chief Executive Gerd Landsberg criticized "a deplorable amount of unnecessary bureaucracy" created by federal and state governments. It is therefore necessary "an investment acceleration law with a consequent reduction of bureaucracy in procurement law, in building law, but also in the funding guidelines of the federal and state governments".
