Chancellor Scholz, ‘quarreled’ with his finance minister for not letting him expand his office

What’s more, in 2023, Germany has ceased its gas imports from Putin’s country. “Nobody expected that we would easily survive a total cut off of Russian gas supplies,” German Chancellor, German Chancellor, said at the beginning of the year. Olaf Schölzat the Davos Economic Forum.

The forecasts of its Executive have even reached rule out, for now, the recession for this year. The economy, yes, will grow by barely 0.2%, they say in the German government, although these calculations do not take into account possible consequences of the turbulence that the financial markets are experiencing and that have already caused a significant stock market scare for Deutsche Bank, the largest German entity and one of the largest in the global economy.

[Millones de trabajadores de transportes paran Alemania en la mayor huelga en décadas]

For now, yes, the German economy holds without sinking. To explain this German resistance, many factors would have to be considered. The opening of the mobile terminals for the entry of liquid natural gas in the north of the country, the successful saving of natural gas, the storage of this hydrocarbon, intensive use of coal as a source of energybeyond the classic German industrial strengths, serve to understand why Germany resists the consequences of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

However, the German government has also used massive support measures to resist the population and companies to withstand the energy crisis and the tremendous rise in prices. Among the initiatives that Scholz and company have launched is that plan endowed with 200,000 million euros with which to rescue the economy of the country, the largest in the old continent and the fourth worldwide.

In order to finance measures like this, the country has drawn, fundamentally, from indebtedness. For deserved fame as a rich country that it has, Germany does not swim in abundance. Much of the Teutonic economic muscle is explained by its also internationally recognized saving nature. In keeping with that tradition, the German finance minister, the liberal christian lindner it has now become “Mr. no.” He is now the head of the German Executive which says “no” to all willingness to government spending that he considers superfluous.

In the most difficult days of the euro crisis, it was Merkel who was internationally called “Madam no”, for making it difficult for proposals to rescue the economy of southern European countries, such as Spain.

1,000 M. to expand the Chancellery?

So far, Lindner has faced the plans of his boss to expand the Federal Chancellery, the equivalent of the Palacio de la Moncloa in Madrid. A mammoth extension to Scholz’s workplace is supposed to be completed by 2028.

Said reform would multiply by two the space of the current Federal Chancellery, turning it into “the largest central government office in the world”, according to the estimates of the newspaper Bildthe most widely read newspaper in Germany.

The cost of such a work, spectacular, according to the images of the project shared with EL ESPAÑOL by the Federal Office for Construction and Territorial Planning (BBR, by its German acronym), is estimated at 777 million euros.

Initially, it was officially said that the cost would be 637 million euros. The project includes pedestrian bridges over the River Spree that would link the current building where Scholz works with the new premises of the Federal Chancellery. In the new complex there is space for no less than 400 offices. They total 23,000 square meters.

The militants of the good use of public money, gathered in the German Taxpayers Federation, even dare to fear a cost that could exceed 1,000 million euros. “Before the laying ceremony of the first stone, the planned expenses had already increased considerably,” they recall in that citizen organization.

“For the new building, total costs of 485 million euros were initially approved. Later it was learned (…) that the federal government could cost about 601 million euros. Then the forecast increased again: the federal government assumed total costs of about 637 million euros. To this we must add a risk cushion of 140 million euros (…) In total, 777 million euros have been budgeted”, the organized taxpayers explain with visible mistrust.

The German Taxpayers Federation calls for the project to be stopped. And surely they will approve Lindner, who said the other day on public television that this is not the time for expenses like the expansion of the Federal Chancellery.

“I think that in times of working from home and workers with location flexibility, a new building that costs at least 800 million for the Federal Chancellery is expendable,” according to Lindner. “I think you’re going to be upset by suggesting this. [parar el proyecto]. But it’s my job!”, the German finance guardian abounded.

“Stop borrowing”

To the chagrin of Scholz, his finance minister, he has pulled out the scissors. By 2024 he wants to close a budget that includes the new and pharaonic work of the Federal Chancellery soon. What’s more, even in his own ministry, one of the most important in the Executive, the construction of an expansion building has stopped.

The work for this project has been estimated at around 322 million euros. “We have to stop borrowing. For this, I am rethinking projects that are desirable but not necessary. That’s why I question the new building for the Ministry of Finance”Lindner said a few days ago to the newspaper Bild. The reform of the Ministry of Finance dates from 2019, when the one that held the reins of German finance, under the mandate of the former chancellor Angela Merkelwas none other than Olaf Scholz.

Hubertus Bardteconomist and researcher at the Institute for the Economy of Germany (IW), a center for economic studies based in Cologne (west Germany) agrees to tell EL ESPAÑOL that, for the budget magnitude of the German State, these amounts are “symbolic” .

“It is a symbol to stop spending on the expansion of the Federal Chancellery or the Ministry of Finance, because they are relatively small sums. But if you add up, small amounts of money add up to a larger amount,” says Bardt.

In his opinion, Lindner is transferring to the country that “you have to spend on what is necessary.” In this context, “making a new building for the chancellor would have been a very difficult thing to communicate,” according to Bardt. And so much.

The works to build the extension of the Federal Chancellery have not begun and the Government has already been reproached from the opposition for thinking of spending taxpayers’ money on palatial offices instead of helping with the economic difficulties that many Germans are going through. This is what the Christian Democrat deputy has said Franziska Hopperman: “For the Government, these ivory towers are more important than alleviating the expenses that weigh so heavily on citizens.”