Unprecedented package for defence, climate and infrastructure spending
Leader of left-wing populist BSW Sahra Wagenknecht speaking during a debate at the Bundestag in Berlin. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Imageswill go out with a bang on Tuesday with an all-or-nothing sitting to back – or sink – an unprecedented €1 trillion stimulus plan for defence, climate and infrastructure spending.
Mainstream parties in the new Bundestag will lack the necessary two-thirds majority for major changes to German debt rules, anchored in the constitution or Basic Law. For that reason the centre-right Christian Democratic Union chairman Friedrich Merz has recalled outgoing Bundestag MPs for one final vote on Tuesday.
Taken together his CDU, centre-left Social Democratic Party and Greens have 31 votes more than they need for a two-thirds supermajority – but even Merz acknowledged he cannot be certain of a majority until the vote goes through. As well as €500 billion for infrastructure and climate projects, to be borrowed and spent over the coming decade, MPs are being asked to exclude all defence spending above 1 per cent of German GDP from debt rules – effectively removing the upper limit on borrowing.
“The constitutional court emphasised that the new Bundestag must convene if one third of MPs demand it,” said Wagenknecht. “Then the old Bundestag can no longer meet and can no longer decide anything.” Post-election analysis showed protest voters, furious with the political mainstream, were more likely to back the AfD and Linke.
Bundestag Christian-Democratic-Union
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