In German the same word, Schuld, has two different meanings: “debt” and “fault”. As if to say that debt is accompanied by a moral stigma. This linguistic curiosity helps to understand why everyone gives a little for granted that the Germans, who in 2009 even included a clause of a “brake to debt”, do not want to deviate from their traditional line of lesine and rigor. The topic in the election campaign obviously spoke, but all the candidates preferred to keep a low profile. Of the series: you never know. Polls made close to the elections, however, reveal a marked change of views. This was confirmed by Forsa scholars, who carried out a full -bodied research on behalf of the German Council for foreign relations (DGAP), according to which the majority of the Germans now sees the brake reform reform, scheduled for the establishment since 2009, thus opening the way to greater public investments. If not a real cultural turn, it could be a long -awaited steering, on which few outside of Germany they realized.
Designed to ensure fiscal stability, the brake to the debt fixes severe limits. Over the years, however, he has been criticized on several occasions and deemed a brake on investments. The debate on the reform of the brake to the debt returned to the center of attention after a sentence of the Constitutional Court of November 2023, which declared the “creative” use of a state budget, the climate and transformation fund, to circumvent the brake on debt. The sentence in question has invested an important aspect of the coalition agreement between green, social democrats and liberal, splitting the government led by Scholz and reopening the debate on the need to reform the tax rules in Germany.
Let’s go back to Bomba: the Forsa-Dgap study dates back to last January and records a showy movement in public opinion. 55 percent of the Germans now support the reform or abolition of the brake to debt to encourage public investments. The figure marks a surge compared to 44 percent in November 2024 and 32 of the previous July. A particularly interesting aspect is that the support for the brake reform to the debt is not confined to the left parties. The majority (55 percent) of CDU-CSU voters, traditionally in favor of rigorous tax policies, is in favor of the attachment or abolition of the brake to debt. Even among the FDP voters, 41 percent share this position, despite the party firmly defended tax orthodoxy. Although the support is higher among SPD (66 percent) and green (85) voters, the numbers show that the question goes well beyond the traditional left-right division. To dominate the scene is the awareness that the German economic model pours into a very serious crisis and urgently change. They urge investments. The survey shows that the Germans are in favor of investing in key sectors such as education (87 percent), transport (67), health (65), internal security (63), defense (57) and energy infrastructures (53).
For research the Germans would prefer (59 percent) Finance the investments by cutting other items of spending on the public budget, but it is easier to say than to do. Much of the federal budget is in fact already “assigned”. To all this is added the circumstance, highlighted in the Forsa studio, that the Germans in turn are reluctant to reduce spending in crucial areas such as welfare and pensions. With the difficult compromise between renouncing investments and increasing the debt, the majority of the Germans (56 percent) now plays for the second.
It then remains to be understood, if the taboo of indebtedness will really fail, where Berlin’s investments will be enchanted. Wolfgang Munchu, the well -known German economist, has recently printed an excellent essay, Kaput (written just like that, with a single “T”), in which he shows that the problem of Germany’s economy is not so much the loss of Russian gas at a cowardly price, or China as Eldorado of exports. According to Munchu, the true origin of the crisis of the German model consists in the fact that the country’s elites starting from a certain moment made strategic bets wrong, losing decisive trains. As? For example, insisting on mechanics and neglecting digital. If they repeated the error, then yes that the debt would be fault. Unforgivable.
