Germany’s Greens threaten to torpedo massive debt spending deal
A massive plan to loosen Germany’s debt rules and spent hundreds of billions on defence and infrastructure running into potentially decisive opposition from the Greens.
The votes in parliament would be essential for passage.
Green politicians have been warning for days that the massive spending deal doesn’t do nearly enough to address climate change.
It might be used as a way to finance tax cuts instead of dramatically higher overall spending.
Green parliamentary group co-chairwomen Katharina Dröge and Britta Hasselmann said on Monday that they would recommend that Green lawmakers vote against the package.
Dröge said that the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the centre-left Social Democrats wanted to create a massive fund of borrowed money to put towards things like tax breaks and diesel fuel subsidies for farmers.
The Greens have been demanding more funding for climate priorities and greater commitments about how the money would be spent.
The spending deal was struck by the CDU/CSU, which won February’s German election, and the SPD, who were expected to become the junior coalition partners in the next government.
But the votes of the Greens are essential to enacting the deal, since Germany’s strict balanced-budget rules are anchored in the country’s constitution.
Any changes required a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag and lower house of German parliament.
The deal between the CDU/CSU and SPD would create a 500 billion euros (542 billion dollars) special fund for infrastructure investments to be spent over the next decade.
It enables far higher long-term military budgets by permanently exempt any defence spending above 1per cent of German gross domestic product (GDP) from counting toward the debt rules.
dpa/NAN
