The President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher, does not expect a fundamental reform of the debt brake after the Bundestag election. “It will be a homoeopathic, symbolic reform” Fratzscher told the Tagesspiegel.
According to Fratzscher, it is more likely that technical adjustments or the permission for the federal states and the federal government to take on their own debts will be made. The economist accused the politicians of dishonesty: “They promise the people that the debt brake can be maintained and still be relieved and invest more” Fratzscher said.
Instead, one must decide between the further decay of the infrastructure and more possibilities for the state. Fratzscher also criticized the high proportion of state pension supplements in the budget: “A quarter of the budget are supplements to the statutory pension – tendency increasing” the economist told the Tagesspiegel. Young people will have to pay for this: “Here, reforms are not dared by the politics”.
The economist therefore called for the debt brake to be “age-appropriate”. “The long-term problem are the implicit debts, i.e. the promises we made to the baby boomers for the next 20 years” Fratzscher said. “These costs will explode and must be limited by the state in the interest of future generations”.