Status: 28.11.2023, 11:41 a.m.
By: Jens Kiffmeier
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Germany is in a budget crunch. And the traffic light has no plan for a solution – that's what Markus Söder thinks. He has nothing but scorn for Scholz's speech.
Berlin/Munich – Sharp criticism from Munich: In view of the budget emergency, the opposition continues to accuse the German government of failure. Above all, Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) attested to the traffic light coalition's lack of insight into the budget chaos. "What was that?" wrote the CSU leader just a few minutes after a speech by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the Bundestag on Platform X, adding: "The chancellor's government statement is disappointing: bloodless and without orientation, without vision and without concept." CDU leader Friedrich Merz expressed a similar view.
Government statement on the federal budget: Söder reacts with criticism to Scholz's speech
The criticism of Söder is no coincidence. The traffic light coalition has been under pressure for days. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe had declared the reallocation of 60 billion euros in the 2021 budget to the Climate and Transformation Fund null and void. The money had been approved as a Corona loan, but was to be used retrospectively for projects for climate protection and the modernization of the economy. Now the money has to be found again and new budgets have to be drawn up. Important projects are hanging in the balance and have been causing controversy within the traffic light coalition for days.
Against this background, Scholz made a government statement in the Bundestag on Wednesday morning (28 November). Despite the billion-dollar holes in the budget, his coalition will stick to the course of modernizing Germany, the Chancellor asserted. Anything else would be a "serious, unforgivable mistake," Scholz said. At the same time, however, he prepared the citizens for the threat of austerity measures. The Bundestag has postponed the conclusion of the budget deliberations. "This gives us time to sound out existing room for manoeuvre in the budget, to set priorities and, of course, to limit spending," said the SPD politician.
"The plan is missing": Markus Söder sees the traffic light coalition at the end of its rope due to budget crisis
However, Scholz did not provide any concrete information on the conceivable deletion list. The CDU and CSU saw this as a sign of a lack of ideas. "There is a lack of a clear plan. Instead of new answers, only open questions remain. What will happen to the 2024 budget? Where are savings made? This is not how Germany will get out of the national crisis," Söder wrote in X. And for Merz, too, there is only patchwork within the traffic light coalition after the verdict. "What you have presented here are purely technical answers to a highly political decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. You are a plumber of power," he railed in his rebuttal speech in the Bundestag.
Accuses the chancellor of a lack of a plan in the budget crisis: Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU). © Christoph Soeder/Daniel Karmann/dpa/Montage
Two days ago, the two politicians had already issued a scathing report card to the federal government because of the dispute over the federal budget and therefore called for new elections. Among other things, Söder had envisaged a date on June 9. The European elections are scheduled for this day. But from the Prime Minister's point of view, an early Bundestag election could also be held at the same time. (jeki
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