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Finance Minister: Scholz can imagine turning away from black zero

2019-12-11T13:16:56.762Z


Olaf Scholz is since the acquisition of the Ministry of Finance as a proponent of black zero. In an interview, he now betrayed what he would sacrifice her for - and he commented on his future.



The new SPD party leadership wants to invest more in the future again in the infrastructure of the country. This course was prescribed by Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken to the Social Democrats at the last party congress. For the black zero could be sacrificed, for the SPD Finance Minister Olaf Scholz actually stood. He commented on this in an interview - and was open to more debt.

A sticking to the black zero does not see the Minister of Finance as a mandatory principle of budgetary policy. In the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, he expressly backed the decision of the SPD party conference of the weekend, according to which future investments "should not fail in dogmatic positions such as Schäuble's black zero". "I like the sentence," said Scholz.

"Investing in the infrastructure and thus in the future of our country is necessary even when tax revenues are falling, as I have always said," the Minister of Finance emphasized. "It would be wrong to reduce investment in an economic crisis." This is exactly what happened in the past, but "that will not happen to me".

Scholz called the primary goal "that we enable the highly indebted municipalities to invest again". These would have to be forgiven. The renunciation of new debts in the federal budget had been a strict principle of the former Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), which Scholz had initially taken over after taking office in 2018.

"I think a lot of people like what I'm doing"

The demand for a multi-billion dollar investment program was one of the demands of the SPD Party Congress, on which the Social Democrats now want to negotiate with the Union. Scholz said he was looking forward to these talks with confidence. "There are no ultimatums or red lines drawn, we are not in a bazaar but in a government," said the Minister of Finance.

He also made it clear that after the change of leadership in the SPD he saw no reason to give up his ministry. "I think a lot of people like what I'm doing, and that I'm the one I am," he said of "time."

At the congress, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans were elected as new SPD chairmen. Both are different than Scholz attributed to the left party wing. They had previously prevailed in a member survey against Scholz and his partner Klara Geywitz. Geywitz is now Parteivize, Scholz had renounced after the defeat on a candidacy for a party office.


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Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-12-11

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