BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s conservative opposition chief and doable subsequent chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Wednesday rejected a reform of the debt brake earlier than elections deliberate for Feb. 23.
The debt brake – which performed an element in breaking the coalition, precipitating the calling of a snap election – limits the general public deficit to 0.35% of gross home product and may solely be modified with a two-thirds majority within the higher and decrease homes of parliament.
“I can positively rule that out,” the Christian Democrats’ (CDU) Merz instructed Deutschlandfunk radio station.
“Lifting the debt brake simply earlier than the tip of this coalition has all the time been a transparent reply from us: No, we can’t try this,” Merz added.
Merz was considerably extra open, albeit sceptical, about after the election: “We will talk about the debt brake, however not if it entails merely growing spending, as a result of then all the opposite issues will not be solved,” he mentioned.
State spending would first must be reformed earlier than he would think about a change to the debt brake, mentioned Merz, and even then, he was “very, very sceptical” as as to if this was the suitable technique to create extra debt.
Merz had confirmed openness to reforming the brake, which was launched by his occasion beneath Angela Merkel, earlier this month after beforehand arguing the nation ought to keep it up.
