{"id":445789,"date":"2025-09-23T12:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T12:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/445789\/"},"modified":"2025-09-23T12:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T12:26:10","slug":"germanys-klingbeil-announces-record-investment-but-warns-of-belt-tightening-ahead-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/445789\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s Klingbeil announces record investment, but warns of belt-tightening ahead \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cOf course, as I&#8217;m sure is true for all of us, I have noticed time and again in conversations over the past few weeks how difficult it is to explain to citizens that, on the one hand, we are investing heavily in the future of our country, but on the other hand, we are also required to make massive savings in the core budget. I can tell you that both are necessary. Both are essential. On the one hand, we are investing in the modernization of the state, and at the same time we have to get running costs under control.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most of the new investment planned for next year is coming out of special funds that are not part of Germany\u2019s regular budget, including \u20ac49 billion from an infrastructure and climate fund, Klingbeil said. That fund was created as part of  a historic package of constitutional spending reforms <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/germany-parliament-spending-reforms-defense-military-infrastructure-friedrich-merz\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the German parliament passed back in March<\/a> that included a loosening of Germany\u2019s constitutional debt brake to unlock massive defense spending.<\/p>\n<p>But those spending reforms did not fully do away with Germany\u2019s debt brake \u2014\u00a0a constitutional provision that limits the federal government&#8217;s structural deficit to 0.35 percent of gross domestic product. Germany\u2019s regular budgetary spending is still therefore subject to considerable fiscal restraints.<\/p>\n<p>German Chancellor Friedrich Merz&#8217;s government will be forced to make tough spending decisions in the coming months to rein in regular spending at a time when Germany\u2019s economy is struggling. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/german-economy-did-even-worse-than-thought-in-the-spring\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GDP fell 0.3 percent in the second quarter<\/a> of this year compared with the previous three months, completely reversing a first quarter gain and leaving GDP a meager 0.2 percent up on the year.<\/p>\n<p>Klingbeil in his Bundestag speech said the German government had been forced to borrow extensively in recent years to overcome the\u00a0Covid-19\u00a0pandemic, to bolster Germany\u2019s defenses following Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and to handle the energy shock that came as a consequence of that war.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe money that we all needed and from which we all benefited as a society must be repaid at some point,\u201d said Klingbeil. \u201cAnd for a long time, that point seemed very distant. But that point starts now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOf course, as I&#8217;m sure is true for all of us, I have noticed time and again in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[1194,2825,473,35,2000,299,474,1945,1824,6084,1197,5111,332,657,771,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-445789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-debt","10":"tag-defense","11":"tag-energy","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-finance","15":"tag-friedrich-merz","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-infrastructure","18":"tag-investment","19":"tag-parliament","20":"tag-russia","21":"tag-ukraine","22":"tag-war","23":"tag-war-in-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115253607392872996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}