The panel, chaired by Stephan Weil (SPD), Reinhold Hilbers (CDU), and Stefan Müller (CSU), thus presents no unified recommendation. Unlike the pension commission, the coalition of CDU, CSU, and SPD cannot rely on expert mediation.
The vast majority of the commission agrees only that limiting the structural deficit remains a suitable tool for controlling public debt. There is also consensus that defense spending should be reintegrated into the core budget in the medium term and subjected to debt brake rules. All other proposals failed to achieve the required two-thirds majority.
The Union proposal, internally called the “breathing debt brake,” would keep the structural deficit limit at 0.35 percent of GDP as long as total debt exceeds 60 percent. Defense spending would be gradually transferred to the regular budget between 2029 and 2035. This would reduce the federal government’s borrowing capacity by more than 100 billion euros per year – a barely manageable operation given tax revenues of around 400 billion euros.
The SPD-leaning proposal, the “investment-oriented debt brake,” aims for a longer transition for the military until 2040 and would partially exempt spending on railways, bridges, digitalization, and education from the credit rule. Federal and state governments could then spend an additional 0.8 percent of GDP for investments on top of the 0.7 percent deficit limit – a total of 1.5 percent of economic output. Economists Philippa Sigl-Glöckner and Isabella Weber, by contrast, focus not on the debt ratio but on multi-year expenditure trends, and want to comply with EU debt rules without creating stricter national regulations. Additionally, full employment should be enshrined as an equal constitutional goal.
Source: www.n-tv.de
