German Finance Minister Jörg Kukies (SPD) considers the state to be “fully operational” without a budget resolution in the coming year, citing the principle of provisional budget management, which takes effect when there is no adopted budget, he said in the Deutschlandfunk.
“This procedure is absolutely established.” It’s also a usual phenomenon after every federal election that the outgoing Bundestag does not pass a new budget just before the change of government or before new elections, “leaving it to the newly elected Bundestag”, the SPD politician said. The common phenomenon of having a few months of provisional budget management at the beginning of the year is “nothing out of the ordinary”.
Existing institutions and everything the federal government finances or co-finances with the states can continue to exist and will be financed, Kukies said. All statutory claims will also be paid. “There will be no shutdown.”
Additionally, there are so-called “continuation measures”, he added. “That means, things that started in 2024 can of course also be continued in 2025. All measures that we have committed to in 2024 or earlier can also be commissioned in 2025.”
In this sense, it’s not as if nothing new would happen. “That’s a matter of interpretation, but this has been repeatedly and repeatedly proven under provisional budget management in many, many years.” The individual ministries can always assess under which conditions these so-called continuation measures will take place.