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No worries, we’ll solve the issue by cutting the budget for bicycle infrastructure in half, saving 300 million.
While spending a record amount of 13 billion on Autobahn projects, citing “overwhelming public interest” (which removes the requirement for an environmental impact assessment).This will predictably lead to the traffic sector missing its CO2 budget target, but we’re fixing that by getting rid of binding sector-specific CO2 targets altogether.
While I agree with the sentiment behind your comment, every big infrastructure project has to have an EIA and so do Autobahn projects. Very simply put, the argument „overwhelming public opinion“ can be used to build a project in spite of its negative environmental consequences.
*can‘t
My question is why is the climate crisis not considered a crisis big enough to break the debt limit whereas the covid crisis was, this has been the hottest summer ever, by a lot, let’s see next year’s, when it’s too late.
this has been the hottest summer ever
I hope you enjoyed it, it might have been the coolest summer for the rest of our lives!
Because in the eyes of the constitutional court it’s not an unforeseeable, acute crisis, but something that is known since decades :(
Legally: because it didn’t happen suddenly and the law only allows exceptions if a crisis happens suddenly.
Much simpler: The reason was A. You cannot use A-excpetion to fund B
A=covid
B=climate, industry, future, …
Ukraine war and inflation could have served as reasons to break the debt limit, but the FDP was strictly against that. They think they can gain voters by strictly adhering to the debt limit.
Because it’s a ‘frog in the hot water’ kind of crisis vs a ‘frog in the fire’ kind of crisis.
Why is it always the poor frogs? 😭
Probably because one is an immediate, temporary crisis and the other is a general, long-lasting, global-scale crisis, where increasing the federal budget doesn’t seem to have a short-term effect to mitigate the negative effects
That’s not the point here.
This decision of the court didn’t try to make any political point or find a solution, it was only asked to decide, whether moving funds (or more precisely: grants to take on loans) was legal or not.
Now politics kicks in and they’re supposed to find a solution that’s actually legal for a change.
German politics is an absolute shit show right now.
“ German politics is an absolute shit show right now” just a matter of perspective
Indeed. This article is nonsense. Germany should declare the climate crises an emergency. And if they don’t like the debt limit rule they passed a few years ago, they can change it. Calling it a ‘budget crisis’ is overblown. It seems that the main problem is that their political parties are currently not working together well. That is not exactly some existential problem at this point. The German economy is way too large to consider a 60 billion euro problem a ‘crisis’.
Our social democrats, had the incredible intelligence to pass it into the constitution, requiring a 2/3 majority, when they were junior partner to the conservative (now reactionary) party. As with many things they passed back then, they claimed to have tummy aches, but to pass it because responsibility or whatever.
This is entirely self made by the now government leading social democrats, who are more of a conservative party and recently tried to jump on the right-populism train. Because that worked soooo well before…
And if they don’t like the debt limit rule they passed a few years ago, they can change it.
But only a minority of the parliament doesn’t like it, that’s the problem. You need 2/3 of the Bundestag, but even our current governing coalition is composed of parties that are in favour of this strict austerity/debt limit (FDP) or are ambiguous or just slightly against it (SPD)
The 60 billion problem could snowball to a 260 billion problem, if more “Sondervermögen” are deemed unconstitutional.
Because it isn’t anything new.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Whether for more efficient heating, expanded rail, or subsidizing energy costs, virtually none of the climate-friendly projects the government had envisioned can be funded as currently planned.
In his reaction to the ruling, Party Leader Lars Klingbeil stopped short of explicitly demanding tax hikes.
“We know that right-wing parties in particular are constantly mobilizing people’s social concerns and fears,” she told public broadcaster ZDF.
With the debt brake staying in place and tax hikes likely doomed to fail against the resistance of the FDP and opposition CDU-CSU, the only option remaining is tight-fisted austerity.
If the Greens’ core issue, climate change mitigation, loses its financial backing, the party could soon be asking what point there is in staying in the coalition.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz attempted to put on a brave face telling the parliament, the Bundestag “am convinced that the governing coalition will succeed in making all the right suggestions.”
The original article contains 887 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Capitalism is failing all over the world.
Germany has the lowest debt ratio of the G7 and one of only 11 countries with a AAA rating. That means Germany has among the lowest borrowing costs of any country in the world.
Basicly it is just a way to pretend there is a budget crisis to cut benefits and hand money to the rich and not a real crisis.
Doesn’t change the fact that it’s failing. Regardless of the crisis is real or imaginary those with money and power need those who create their wealth to always be in survival mode. They don’t have enough power in Germany to create the crisis in the free market economic side, but they sure as hell can pay politicians to cut social investments programs while not increasing wages to get the workers in survival mode.
