His party, the FDP, is small but influential because Lindner took over as finance minister. A first report to the government is being made at the party congress.
At the Liberal Party congress, everything revolves, as always, around their president, Christian Lindner. He is used to this role now. He was first elected in 2014, then 34 years old. He was full of dynamism and breathed new life into his party at a time of great insecurity for the Liberals. 4 years later, he returned the party to the Federal Parliament, initially in the seats of the opposition. But since September 2021 the Liberals together with the Social Democrats and the Greens have been participating in the so-called Coalition of Traffic Light. And so Christian Lindner is back in the spotlight, because in the meantime he has taken over the finance ministry. He is, we would say, the treasurer of Germany, and from this position at the age of 43 he has many possibilities to shape and influence situations.
The “debt brake” and the special fund
Especially during the war in Ukraine, his duties in the ministry are more demanding than ever. And especially for someone like Lindner, whose traditionally liberal party preferred Germany to have no debt and cut taxes at the same time. However, this fiscal model did not work even before the war, which was launched by Putin, because Germany, like the rest of the world, is still suffering from the dramatic effects of the pandemic. So in the 2022 budget, holes with loans of billions of euros should be closed. But only for this year. Because from time to time, according to the FDP, fiscal order will enter. Lindner wants to pull the plug on the debt that is enshrined in the Constitution, the Constitution. According to this, the new debt may not exceed 0.35% of GDP. In the current circumstances, this corresponds to between 12 and 14 billion euros. More only in exceptional cases, such as natural disasters and emergencies. In the past it was the global financial crisis and the pandemic. A completely different situation, but only in part, is the operational capability of the German armed forces, which suffers and is in the magnifying glass from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, Boudever’s structural problems are not an emergency, but arose from internal mistakes and chronic mismanagement. That begs the question, where will the 100 billion euros that Chancellor Soltz promised overnight in consultation with his minister, Christian Lindner, come from? but neither in the country’s foreign exchange reserves, although shares over 200 billion euros “sleep” in the treasuries of Budebank. The custodian of the so-called “state silver” prefers to take more loans on the grounds that in this global situation these are investments that secure the future. With this budget trick, the FDP’s Lindner can achieve his goal and pull the debt brake in 2023, because the loans in the case of Bundeswehr will be concluded this year, but will be activated in the coming years to buy mainly aircraft, war drones. , tanks and armaments.
The FDP demands that heavy weapons be given to Ukraine
For Christian Lindner and his party, the charm of this method lies in the fact that they will not be forced to break a basic election promise not to take on new loans and return to fiscal regularity. Of course, this does not change the fact that the loans taken out as a reserve will have to be repaid one day and therefore this will limit the financial margins in the coming years. Thus the agreed “money rain” for the German armed forces also plays an important role at the party congress in Berlin. In a draft bureau entitled “Peace, Freedom and a European perspective for Ukraine”, the € 100 billion special fund is explicitly supported. At the same time, the FDP leadership around Christian Lindner is demanding the delivery of heavy weapons and the rapid supply of weapons from the German war industry, for which the government, as announced by Soltz, will receive funding. This point leaves the impression that this is a criticism of the chancellor, who is accused by politicians of all government parties of obstructing the delivery of tanks and other heavy weapons to Ukraine. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
The prominent politician from the FDP is playing with a joke that Soltz once said, “when someone asks me for leadership, he has it”, which he had said in an interview in 2011 in the Berlin newspaper Tagespiegel. At the time, of course, Solz was a candidate for the post of local prime minister in Hamburg. Ten years later he has succeeded Angela Merkel. Many believe that the new chancellor is not performing as well as he should. Of course, Finance Minister Lindner will never say that in public. The balance of power in the coalition is clear. In first place is the Social Democratic Party, followed by the Greens and the Liberals. But because the finance minister comes from their ranks, their influence in politics is great. So at the party congress the FDP wants to make a first account of its work in government. Christian Lindner will be missing. He is in quarantine in Washington due to a coronavirus and will still have to stay there. But he will make his speech via video link.
Marcel Firstenau, Editor: Irini Anastassopoulou
Source: Deutsche Welle
Source: Capital
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