German President of the German Association of Cities, Markus Lewe, supports a reform of the debt brake. “The next federal government after the elections will not be able to bypass the debt brake” said the CDU politician to the Funke Media Group newspapers. “If the debt brake hinders necessary future investments, it must be reformed.”
According to Lewe, alone the municipalities have an investment backlog of more than 186 billion euros. “Schools and streets cannot be quickly renovated, new buses and trains cannot be purchased. Funds are often missing even to maintain existing infrastructure in the first place.” To make the cities climate-neutral, enormous sums are needed, said the mayor of Münster. “We must rebuild our cities if we want to achieve the traffic turnaround, the energy turnaround, and the heat turnaround.”
Lewe said: “The debt brake must not hinder these future investments. The federal government and the states must significantly more support the cities in important future tasks.