After the Bundestag, the Bundesrat has now also given the green light for the supplementary budget for 2021 with its billion-euro reallocation. None of the states called the mediation committee, and formal approval by the Bundesrat for the federal budget is not necessary.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner can thus top up the Energy and Climate Fund (EKF) by 60 billion euros. In doing so, he draws on credit authorizations that are not needed and that would otherwise have expired. The money is intended to finance further investments in climate protection and digitization.
"Bypassing the Debt Brake"
The Union faction considers this questionable because the loans were explicitly approved to deal with the Corona crisis. She therefore wants to go before the Federal Constitutional Court. Union parliamentary secretary Thorsten Frei announced the lawsuit for the coming days. "As soon as the law has been drafted, we will file an abstract legal action in Karlsruhe because we are convinced that this is a way of circumventing the debt brake in the Basic Law," Frei said on RTL/ntv's "Frühstart" program.
Frei justified the lawsuit against the supplementary budget with the fact that otherwise one could "bypass the debt brake every year". "This is the opposite of sustainable, generation-fair politics, and that's why we feel obliged to complain about it in Karlsruhe."
Hesse reports concerns
Hesse's Prime Minister Volker Bouffier was also critical of the federal government's supplementary budget. "My concern is that this federal budget is particularly vulnerable," he said in the Bundesrat. There is a not insignificant risk that this budget is unconstitutional. He pointed out that in Hesse the state court had objected to future assets last year.
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