Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Alliance 90/The Greens) is convinced that there will be changes to the debt brake after the upcoming federal election at the latest.
“Even the most conservative economic institutes have changed their minds. The German Bundesbank, the guardian of the debt brake, says we have to change it. It is no longer possible to maintain this because there is such a dynamic. This will probably be the issue in the federal election, and there will probably be talks and perhaps even an agreement on this relatively quickly after the election,” Habeck explained at the WDR Europaforum as part of the “re:publica” event.
The changing times of the past few years have brought about a change in the outlook. “To put it bluntly, we could only say that we have been able to comply with the debt brake in recent years because we have not invested in security,” the Vice Chancellor continued.
The result is that the Bundeswehr is poorly equipped. “People thought they could afford it.” Now Ukraine needs support and security requirements in many areas are increasing. “Nobody had to worry about that in 2009. And when we did think about it, we thought the Americans were doing it. But they’re no longer doing it without restrictions.”
He asked himself whether Germany had recognized the signs of the times. “Is this a temporary momentum of two years of disruptive disruption, and then we will return to the old normal, including the old sluggishness, no digital infrastructure, fax machines and stuff like that, or are we taking seriously the fact that this term “turning point” does not mean a warlike term in the Donbass, but a fundamental change in the signs of political action.”
We need to think carefully about “whether the conditions under which we have settled in the past 15, 20 years – trust in global markets, federalism in Germany, European approval procedures, but also fiscal policy rules such as the debt brake – are sustainable.”
The grand coalition has left behind many problems in the past, such as dependence on Russian gas. “The grand coalition has done nothing or risked nothing in too many areas. Peace in the country ensures that nothing happens. The grand coalition was great at adopting climate protection goals. But it failed completely in terms of achieving concrete measures. I have tried to work through that,” said Habeck.
The Minister of Economic Affairs is concerned that the accumulation of challenges is driving many people across Europe into the arms of right-wing populists. The latter are taking up relevant social issues and polemicizing them so much that they can no longer be solved in a democratic sense. Unity and the will to find solutions are therefore the order of the day. “The strongest answer to exclusion and the destruction of the space for discourse, hatred of groups, is to be successful as a society. We have to get out of this gloom. We have to straighten our backs and say, there is one problem, there are 10 problems, but in the history of the Federal Republic we have solved not ten, but 1,000 problems. We have solved 200 problems in the last two years, so why shouldn’t we solve these ten problems? Then right-wing populism has no chance,” Habeck explained in Berlin.
Right-wing sentiments are not only present among people who feel left behind. The video of people shouting racist slogans on Sylt showed that other population groups are also susceptible. “There are also a lot of people who are very well off who shout Nazi slogans.” This should not surprise anyone, because this had already been clear from relevant studies.