Ramelow: “Pact with the Devil”
CDU could make a million-dollar decision with the AfD
September 13, 2023, 6:09 p.m
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The red-red-green coalition in Thuringia does not have a majority. The opposition CDU plans to reduce the real estate transfer tax – and outvotes the government parties in the budget committee with the FDP and AfD. Now the decision is imminent in the state parliament. State leader Bodo Ramelow is sounding the alarm.
Thuringia’s Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow has warned the CDU not to join forces with the AfD and FDP in reducing the Real estate transfer tax to push through the state parliament. “Instead of targeted family support, as the CDU once wanted, it has now decided for ideological reasons to enter into a pact with the devil,” said the left-wing politician to the “Editorial Network Germany”. The Union only seems to care about ideology. “The CDU is taking family support hostage in order to improve general real estate assets with a flat-rate tax cut.”
SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, among others, had previously warned that the CDU would lose distance from the AfD. “The federal CDU has no authority whatsoever to enforce the course of AfD demarcation announced by Friedrich Merz among party friends in Erfurt,” he explained in Berlin.
Voting in the committee has already taken place
At the end of last week, the state parliament’s budget committee cleared the way for the CDU bill to be voted on in the state parliament this Thursday. The CDU, AfD and FDP had already outvoted the red-red-green government coalition in the committee.
Nevertheless, the Christian Democrats apparently don’t want to know anything about the fall of a firewall to the AfD under Björn Höcke, which is classified as right-wing extremist in Thuringia. A posting by the CDU parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament says: “Because the Left does not want to relieve the burden on families, it is now trying to push the CDU into a corner again with its firewall rhetoric.” This was preceded by a contribution from the Left Party in which it accused the Thuringian CDU of playing a “dirty game”. The reduction in real estate transfer tax is said to cost the country 48 million euros.
Difficult majority situation in Erfurt
The CDU’s controversial draft law has been before the state parliament since March. According to the CDU parliamentary group, it also contains a passage according to which the state should reimburse families for the property transfer tax when they purchase their first residential property. The basis for assessment is a purchase price of a maximum of half a million euros and a maximum refund of 25,000 euros.
The Left, SPD and Greens have no longer had their own majority in the state parliament since 2019; they are four votes short. The CDU (21 MPs), AfD (19 MPs) and FDP (4 MPs) together also did not get the necessary 46 votes.
Two members of the state parliament are organized in the “Citizens for Thuringia” group, two others are independent. These are three former AfD members and one ex-member of the FDP.