Appropriation of 60 billion euros ruled unconstitutional by Germany High Court
After Germany’s Ministry of Health had been granted 200 billion euros of spending to combat the Corona pandemic, it ultimately ended up spending only 140 billion, thus leaving 60 billion unused. Health minister Karl Lauterbach (Socialists) and economics and environment minister Robert Habeck (Greens) moved to spend the 60 billion euros on climate projects.
Illegal funneling
Germany’s ministers Habeck and Lauterbach tried to pull a fast one, and to funnel the unused money for other purposes, namely climate and transformation projects that would make Germany more green and climate friendly.
Unconstitutional! That’s what Germany’s top court just ruled, and the government has now imposed a “spending freeze on new expenditures, especially green initiatives,” reports euronews.com. This has thrown Germany’s budget into chaos.
At the stroke of a pen and a blink of an eye, Germany’s Ministry of Economics and Environment is suddenly missing $60 billion euros it had planned to use to finance the many green transformation projects. Germany’s climate program has just crashed spectacularly into a wall.
The government has also since ordered a “spending freeze on new expenditures, especially green initiatives,” according to euronews.com here. The consequences are horrendous.
Projects “may be on the brink of collapse”
For example, because billions are suddenly unavailable, chip factories in Magdeburg and Dresden may be on the brink of collapse, according to the online Berliner Zeitung here. “Previously, this amount had been kept aside to be used for renewable energy subsidies, energy-efficient housing, chips production and support measures for high-energy companies.” But the German top court rules it unconstitutional.
Longterm budget in total disarray
“The top court’s ruling has thrown German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government’s 2024 budget announcement plans on Friday into disarray. The impact could also extend to financial plans until 2027, as the government now has to make do with €60 billion less,” reports euronews.com.
Nius.de here comments: “The real kicker, however, is that the Federal Constitutional Court’s decision is likely to affect not only the so-called ‘climate and transformation fund’ of the federal government, but also other ‘special funds’ of the federal government, from which it wants to pay electricity subsidies for industry, for example, after initially borrowing a lot of money to destroy the reliable energy supply in Germany.”
Berlin, we have a problem
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More news on this:
Berlin’s decision to freeze all federal spending for the rest of the year came after the court defunded the government’s €60 billion —the equivalent of more than $65 billion—green-transition project. The court said Berlin couldn’t repurpose unspent credits originally earmarked to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic to fund environmental and energy projects. It said Berlin was bound by the country’s constitutionally enshrined fiscal rules that limit budget deficits to 0.35% of gross domestic product in normal times.
Senior government officials said one option under consideration would be to retroactively declare a state of budgetary emergency for 2023, invoking a clause in the fiscal rules that allows for a suspension of the spending limits in exceptional circumstances. Previous governments invoked the exception during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, for Germany’s stimmy-starved politicians, the plan is fraught with legal difficulties, in part because the constitutional court prepared for just this eventuality when it raised the bar for declaring such emergencies, according to Lars Feld, an economist who advises the government.
Strengthening resilience and transforming the economy amid geopolitical crises and climate change was seen as a necessity that required taking on debt, but the court ruling has challenged those assumptions, Feld wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.
Hilariously, the court said that unlike war and natural disasters, climate change was a foreseeable crisis that had been long in the making and could no longer justify emergency spending. Which, however, means that all Germany will have to do is politely request that the CIA start a new war… or that Fauci mail orders a new virus from Wuhan.
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