Three out of four criteria will be red from 2028 – Klingbeil admits “abnormalities” in financial planning

According to a newspaper report, the federal government's financial planning formally violates the common budget policy guidelines of the federal and state governments. According to information from the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, this emerges from the current “Federal Report to the Stability Council”, which Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) sent to his counterparts in the federal states. The main reason is the billions spent on the Bundeswehr.

According to the report, the federal government will not be able to comply with one of the four stability criteria this year and next, and from 2028 onwards even three. Formally, the Stability Council of the federal and state governments would now have to check whether the federal government is facing a “budget emergency,” as Klingbeil’s house admits in the report. Theoretically, the council could even impose austerity requirements on the federal government.

According to “SZ” information, Klingbeil admitted at a meeting with his country colleagues at the beginning of last week that his financial planning for the years 2026 to 2030 had “abnormalities”. However, he can point to a special factor that most of his state colleagues also recognize and that is likely to prevent austerity requirements: The federal government's indicators are partly in red instead of green because the government has been spending tens of billions of euros per year since 2025 to modernize the Bundeswehr.

According to the Basic Law, the funds necessary for this can be raised through loans to avoid the debt brake - otherwise the program would not be able to be financed at the moment. Klingbeil's approach is therefore legally flawless, but has an influence on important budgetary policy figures.

Hardly any experts dispute the fact that this expenditure is at least temporarily necessary to better arm Germany and Europe against possible aggressors. That is why the EU Commission, which also regularly reviews the budgetary behavior of all 27 member states, has created a corresponding exception rule for over-planned defense spending. Like many others, Germany also makes use of this special rule.

In the domestic German surveillance process, however, there is currently no such exception clause: According to “SZ”, a corresponding adjustment to the EU standard has simply been neglected. According to the report, instead of commissioning the “Evaluation Committee” of the Stability Council to deal with the case, the domestic regulations should now be changed and brought into line with the EU rules in an “express procedure”. If all of this works, the new regulation could be decided at the next meeting of the Stability Council on December 3rd.