CSU rants about excess
Report: 1710 new official posts under traffic light ministers
05/26/2023 12:34 am
The picture given by the traffic light coalition could be better. This is mainly due to the dispute over the heating law under the leadership of Economics Minister Habeck and also the personnel policy of his house. Now a new aspect is coming to light that angers the opposition.
The Federal Chancellery and the 15 federal ministries are said to have created a total of 1,710 additional civil servant positions since the start of the traffic light government at the end of 2021. According to a report in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ), this is the result of a response from the Ministry of Finance to a request from the CSU member of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Stefinger. According to the Parliamentary State Secretary Florian Toncar, 249 new civil servant positions were created in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection led by Robert Habeck alone; the total number there rose to 1978.5 civil servant positions.
As the SZ further reports, according to the taxpayers’ association, the number of employees in the federal ministries rose to a total of 30,200 employees and civil servants – in 2012 there were only 18,500 jobs. Since 2012, civil servant positions have increased particularly sharply, by 82 percent. This is particularly controversial because of the high pension costs.
“Robert Habeck, of all people, who robs people of their last hope for a good economic future with his screwed-up heating law, is particularly excessive,” opposition politician Stefinger told the SZ. “Even with 249 new officials in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, laws are being written there that are doomed to fail from the start.”
Ministry of Construction as “particularly expensive flop”
According to the report, jobs were only reduced in the Ministry of the Interior – there is a minus of 95.7 civil servant jobs to 1647.4 jobs. But the component was spun off and a new Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building was founded – with 431 civil servant positions, some of which were transferred from the Ministry of the Interior. “The spin-off of the Ministry of Construction is a particularly expensive flop,” quoted the SZ Stefinger. “If at least the promised 400,000 apartments were built as a result, but this self-imposed target will probably be missed again in 2023, by almost half.”
Reiner Holznagel, President of the Taxpayers’ Association, told the newspaper: “The federal budget is facing tough consolidation decisions in order to comply with the constitutional debt brake.” At the same time, however, those who equip the ministries with more and more civil servants are thwarting the necessary savings efforts. “But it’s not just additional civil servants that put a strain on the budget, because administrative expenses for offices, business trips and IT equipment also inevitably rise sharply as a result.” This money is not available for the Bundeswehr, infrastructure renovation or basic research.
Dietmar Bartsch, leader of the left parliamentary group, criticized the fact that officials were “declared every minute”. A “lifelong operation” especially for the care of party members is hardly plausible in times of inflation and real wage losses. “And it is precisely in the multiple chaos of the traffic light government that it becomes clear that more and more staff does not have to lead to an increase in the quality of government.”