Expert sees billion-dollar gap
Federal Audit Office calls budget “extremely problematic”
November 20, 2023, 6:39 p.m
The budget negotiations are entering the home stretch, but criticism remains: the Federal Audit Office expresses doubts about the legality of the budget. But the economic stabilization fund also arouses skepticism – according to Habeck, electricity, gas and district heating could become more expensive.
After the Karlsruhe budget ruling, the Federal Audit Office considers the federal budgets for this year and next to be “extremely problematic from a constitutional point of view.” This emerges from the statement of the Court of Auditors for the expert hearing on Tuesday in the Budget Committee of the Bundestag. Deciding on the budget for 2024 in the current situation is risky.
Tax lawyer Hanno Kube from the University of Heidelberg, who represented the Union’s lawsuit against the climate fund before the Federal Constitutional Court, advises against a decision in the 2024 budget in his statement. “The current draft of the 2024 budget law could be unconstitutional,” he writes. It is unclear whether individual items from the climate and transformation fund would now have to be transferred to the core budget.
Financial scientist Thiess Büttner from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg sees a gap of at least 52 billion euros in the budget planning. “In order to present a constitutional budget, the federal government must review the planned use of all special funds without its own credit authorization, including beyond the special fund ‘Climate and Transformation Fund’,” it says in its statement. This would then also apply to the Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF), from which the government finances the gas and electricity price brakes through loan authorizations from 2022.
Most of the experts appointed by the parliamentary groups believe that impacts on the special fund for energy price brakes are conceivable. However, they do not comment clearly on the consequences in their statements. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck has already warned of possible rising energy prices. “In its justification, the judgment, because it is so fundamentally spoken, actually refers to all funds that have been set up and that are over the year,” said the Green politician on Deutschlandfunk. The energy price brakes were intended to mitigate the rapid rise in gas and electricity prices following the Russian attack on Ukraine. To this end, the special fund, which is economically independent of the core budget, was provided with loans amounting to 200 billion euros. Whether the funds will still be available next year is just as doubtful as whether the money should have been paid this year at all.
Südekum does not see the core budget being directly affected
In his statement, law professor Henning Tappe expresses concerns about the practice that the government filled the WSF 2022 with loans, some of which will not be used until 2023 and 2024. “A budget law that allows income from loans to finance expenses that only have to be paid in the future fails to meet the budget constitutional principles of maturity and annuality,” writes Tappe.
Economist Jens Südekum, on the other hand, does not see next year’s core budget being directly affected by the Karlsruhe ruling. As long as a spending freeze in the climate and transformation fund is imposed, the 2024 budget can be passed. However, a supplementary budget is likely soon. Because open questions about the judgment cannot realistically be resolved by the end of the year, the budget should still be decided first, he advises.
The Budget Committee of the Bundestag wants to hear experts on Tuesday about the effects of the Constitutional Court ruling on budget planning for 2024. The traffic light coalition made up of the SPD, Greens and FDP wants to decide on the budget in the Budget Committee on Thursday, which according to previous plans will be passed by the Bundestag on December 1st should.