Introduction
The plan to remove Germany’s Debt Brake has been widely hailed as a tremendous breakthrough, wonderful for Europe and for the Eurozone.
However, the means to get it through the Parliament with the required 66% majority (as it is a change in the constitution) demonstrate that Europe’s elite politicians have lost their marbles and care nothing for democratic legitimacy – just as JD Vance said in Munich.
Election result and sudden plan to remove the Debt Brake
The SPD or Social Democrat Party lost the recent German parliamentary election, but the Conservative CDU/CSU scarcely won it.
Now these two parties want to form a coalition.
To that end they suddenly agree on what was disagreeable right up to the election: to release the so-called Debt Brake which has kept the Federal government debt at around 60% of the size of the German economy.
Once again we see a politican steadfastly oppose a policy up to an election by voters, then do a pirouette the moment they achieve power.
The plan for new borrowing
Current indications are that another 10-12% will be added to the German Debt-to-GDP ratio: €500 billion of new borrowing on top of the existing €2.7 trillion. German GDP is stagnant, although the spending of the €500 billion will raise it – as if economic growth were that easy.
A given proportion will be spent on defence assets, as if they go on to seed further economic growth like a new factory or new machines. Actually the consumer more wealth to crew and maintain them, and then they can get blown up, reducing themsleves to an asset value of zero whilst the borrowing remains.
Who will execute the plan for new borrowing
The proposed coalition government, headed by CDU/CSU and with SPD as their partner, will make the new borrowings and allocate the proceeds over the coming years.
Any parliamentary votes about those matters will be done under the new make-up of the Bundestag, with the seats allocated in line with the recent election. Those votes should require a simple majority – which the coalition would be able to muster in the new Bundestag.
Who will approve the plan to the Debt Brake in the first place
The old Bundestag will.
The CDU/CSU and the SPD combined have the votes neither in the old or the new Bundestag to reach the 66% threshold.
But they can get it through the old Bundestag with the support of the Greens alone.
Suddenly it is acceptable to put through the vote to change the constitution and release the Debt Brake using the seat allocations as they were before the SPD lost 86 of its seats, while the pre-election Bundestag is still sitting.
CDU/CSU plan to put this to the vote with SPD support on 18th March. They can get their plan over the line with the CDU/CSU and SPD delegate numbers in the old Bundestag as long as the Greens support it, which it looks as if they will, in exchange for some concessions.
The new CDU/CSU-SPD alignment does not require the support of the Linke party, who will not support it if any of the money is spent on defence.
Under the seat allocations in the new Bundestag the CDU/CSU-SPD alignment would need the support either of Linke – and then the defence spending would have to disappear – or of AfD, who are dead set against it.
86 SPD deputies must function as ghosts, or ‘Gespenster’
To enable the passage of the proposal in the old Bundestag, 86 SPD deputies must function as ghosts (‘Geisterabgeordneten’): they lost their seats in the election, the voters do not want them to be deputies, but they are still empowered during the changeover period. This power will be used (or should it be abused?) to alter the constitution.
The allowing of deputies to vote who shouldn’t is the same, surely, as not allowing deputies to vote who should. No doubt clever lawyers will argue how legitimate the former pathway is, even if it was never used before to alter the Federal Republic of Germany’s constitution.
Similar tactics used to alter the Weimar Republic constitution
The tactics of the CDU/CSU-SPD alignment seem to be not substantially different from those used after the Reichstag fire in 1933. 81 KPD (‘Communist Party of Germany’) members of the Reichstag were prevented from taking their seats pursuant to the election on 5th March 1933, thanks to the steps taken by the Nazis after the burning-down of the Reichstag building on 27th February 1933, notably the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28th February 1933.
These steps were orchestrated by Hermann Göring as Prussian Interior Minister.
The ground was laid for the passage through the Reichstag a month later of the Enabling Act which changed the constitution to extent of disabling it: the Hitler dictatorship was thereby embedded.
This was an outrageous stepping-off-the-reservation by a government and a token of total contempt for the electors.
Summary and conclusions
Bringing up a sudden plan to release the Debt Brake demonstrates contempt for the German electorate on the part of CDU/CSU, as they had rejected the notion up doing it during the recent election campaign.
They then pirouette directly after their unconvincing win in the election, discard their promises, and get into bed with the SPD, with whom prior to the election they would not have been seen dead with.
They also break bread with the Greens, in order to get them to support the release of the Debt Brake, without the Greens getting into the coalition four-poster bed.
As if this was not outrageous enough, the vote on the Debt Brake will be put to a Bundestag that the German voters have stated they do not want to be in charge of their affairs.
This will represent an outrageous stepping-off-the-reservation by the CDU/CSU-SPD alignment and the Greens, and a gesture of total contempt for the German electors, a parallel with the events of 1933.
One would have hoped that sane and senior politicians in the CDU/CSU and SPD would of their own accord have recognised the parallel and organised a stepping-back before 18th March.
This now looks unlikely to occur.