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It just went well: After hours of wrestling, the National Council and the Council of States have agreed on the budget for 2024 and the further outlook. With one or two tricks, they sorted out their differences, complied with the debt brake requirements and thus gave Finance Minister Karin Keller-Suter a small gift.
Expenditure next year will now amount to almost 86 billion francs. According to the requirements of the debt brake, the deficit can be around half a billion, and the councils can spend a maximum of 18 million additional francs. New expenses must be compensated for elsewhere.
Spared agriculture and army
It was clear right from the start of the negotiations: Parliament did not want to save money on agriculture. Direct payments remain at the current level and there are additional funding – for example for Swiss wine and animal breeds as well as for herd protection.
The councils had already decided in principle that the army should receive funds in the future. However, the Council of States and the National Council disagreed on the question of speed: for the Council of States, the army should be able to dispose of one percent of the gross domestic product as early as 2030 – for the Federal Council and National Council, 2035 was early enough. The latter variant prevailed.
Check for education, migration and funds
Due to the tense financial situation, the Federal Council has already made cross-sectional cuts of two percent, with the exception of agriculture and the army.
The councils rejected additional funds for education and reduced the amounts paid to the cantons in the area of social assistance for asylum seekers and refugees. In addition, the annual deposits into various funds were reduced – those for regional location development and for rail infrastructure.
Reach for your bag of tricks
Funding for the UN relief organization for Palestine refugees UNWRA was controversial right up to the end – should it be cut or reduced? The finance commissions resorted to a trick: They cut the money for humanitarian aid for the suffering civilian population in the Middle East, but left it to the foreign ministry to decide where it wanted to use the funds. They should take place in tranches and take the foreign policy situation into account.
Reaching for the bag of tricks also helped in other respects – for example, by recording individual expenses as extraordinary. This meant they were not subject to the debt brake requirements.
Raised warning finger
So for now everything went well. However: There were individual protest votes in parliament. It was a criticism of the accounting tricks, but also a raised warning finger for future budget debates: Tricks and gimmicks cannot be done every year, warned the right and the left.
The outlook for the coming years already shows that the federal treasury will be missing several billion francs: expenses for the AHV, the premium reductions, the Ukraine refugees and – the promised money for the army. The scope will remain narrow.