CDU state leaders for reform
Haseloff and Kretschmer are shaking up the debt brake
November 24, 2023, 5:10 p.m
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Berlin’s Governing Mayor gets support: Against the line of the party leadership, the CDU state leaders of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt are also in favor of reforming the debt brake. So far, this has primarily been a wish of the SPD and the Greens.
Calls for a reform of the debt brake are also becoming louder among the CDU prime ministers. After Berlin’s governing mayor Kai Wegner, the prime ministers of Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony, Reiner Haseloff and Michael Kretschmer, also spoke out in favor of a reform. So far, the Greens and the SPD in particular have called for such a reform. “The debt brake must remain. But constitutionally compliant options must be found for very important future investments in business, technology and science,” said Haseloff to the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. For 2024, Haseloff wants to see the debt brake suspended by declaring an emergency – a demand that has so far been raised primarily by the SPD.
Saxony’s Prime Minister Kretschmer made similar comments to Haseloff. If the federal government is ready for real austerity measures, “then we have to help,” he told the “FAS”. At the end of a joint process “there could be a pact for Germany – and perhaps a discussion about changing the debt brake.”
Kretschmer sees the situation after the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling as dramatic. What the traffic light coalition had brought to the country could “paralyze Germany for decades,” he said. And this could “shake the foundations” of trust in the state and democracy.
Surveys in Saxony see AfD ahead
Kretschmer, who has to pass state elections in September 2024, sees a common solution as necessary so that extremist forces do not become stronger. “Because if we Democrats don’t find a solution together, it will make the extremists stronger,” he said. In surveys, the AfD is currently the strongest force in Saxony.
Kretschmer said that the federal government’s necessary austerity measures now include not increasing social spending any further. “We are therefore no longer allowed to pay out billions in citizen’s money to people who don’t want to work,” he said. It cannot be the case “that we spend half a billion just on the administration of the new basic child benefit”. If the federal government realizes this, then the Union will help “create the financial leeway we need.”