After weeks of intense negotiations, Germany’s three-party ruling coalition has agreed on a new spending plan for next year, POLITICO reports.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, his Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Finance Minister Christian Lindner will announce the deal at noon local time. Scholz’s speech to parliament will follow shortly afterwards.
Andreas Schwarz, a budget policy lawmaker from Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, wrote on X:
“Habemus budget 2024!”
A ruling coalition spokesman said a joint meeting of leading politicians from the three ruling parties – SPD, Habeck’s Greens and Lindner’s fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) – will take place this afternoon.
Germany’s ruling coalition has been in disarray since the country’s Constitutional Court issued a surprise ruling last month that blew a 60 billion euro hole in its finances. The ruling immediately created a financial gap of 17 billion euros for the 2024 budget.
Details of the budget agreement passed on Wednesday have not yet been released. The agreement is a draft proposal that still has to be discussed by members of the ruling parties and approved in parliament. It is expected to come into force in early January.
The draft agreement comes ahead of Scholz’s visit to Brussels for the EU-Western Balkans summit, and ahead of a crucial summit of EU leaders on Thursday and Friday. There, leaders will seek to agree to open talks on Ukraine’s accession to the EU and to allocate more defence funds to Kyiv. The leaders are also due to discuss the EU budget for the coming years.
