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The German government will not be able to finalise its 2024 budget before the end of the year, a senior ruling party official said yesterday, as a fractious coalition tries to narrow differences on fixing a budget hole.
“This is however not a crisis,” German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said, playing down the need to get the budget through parliament before the end of the year.
“I have realised that the coalition partners have very ambitious timetables,” Lindner said on Thursday in Brussels.
He said that a political agreement on the structure of next year’s budget was likely to come in a couple of days.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way alliance is reeling from a court ruling last month that has thrown its finances into disarray and forced it to suspend a constitutionally enshrined “debt brake” for the 2023 budget.
Talks are focused on whether to also try to pause the limit on net new borrowing next year to plug a 17-billion-euro ($18.3bn) budget gap, leaving spending on industrial projects, climate policy and welfare in limbo.
“The work has not yet been fully completed,” Lindner said.
Intensive discussions between Scholz, fiscally hawkish Lindner from the Free Democrats (FDP) and Economy Minister Robert Habeck from the Greens party have not achieved a breakthrough so far.
“Although we have done everything we can, the budget for 2024 can no longer be decided on time this year,” Katja Mast, a senior parliamentary leader in Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), wrote in a text message to lawmakers seen by Reuters.
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