After several weeks of negotiations, Germany’s budget proposal for next year was presented on Wednesday – with an expenditure side of just over 480 billion euros.
The coalition government proposes to reduce the military support to Ukraine to 4 billion euros, which corresponds to around NOK 47 billion at today’s exchange rate. This is a halving from 8 billion euros in the 2024 budget.
– Ukraine’s financing is secured for the foreseeable future thanks to loans from the G7 countries and European tools, said German Finance Minister Christian Lindner regarding the decision.
The budget is sent to the National Assembly for approval before it is adopted in a vote which is scheduled to be held in November. The budget currently has a gap of 17 billion euros between estimated expenditure and income. At the same time, the German constitution sets limits on how large borrowing can be, known as the debt brake.
Actually, the budget was supposed to be ready already in March, but it has been postponed several times due to internal disagreements in the coalition government. The Minister of Finance describes this year’s budget negotiations as “particularly tense”.
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2024-07-20 00:48:53