Northern German states push for looser debt brake: "We are running out of time"
Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania want more borrowing room and a fairer inheritance tax.
Archive image · Photo: Foto-AG Melle / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 de (cropped and resized)
Finance ministers from Germany's five northern states called on the federal government at their annual meeting in Bremen to further loosen the debt brake. According to Radio Bremen, they want the states' borrowing limit raised from 0.7 to 1 percent of gross domestic product, warning that investment is otherwise at risk.
Bremen Finance Senator Björn Fecker of the Greens said: "We are running out of time." He pointed to possible shifts in federal majorities after the next election and said investment must remain possible once the federal special fund is used up. Lower Saxony Finance Minister Gerald Heere, also a Green, criticized that the federal reform had so far produced no real result.
The states also called for a fairer inheritance tax, the closing of tax loopholes and taxation of profits from crypto transactions. Fecker said that in Germany one could bequeath "300 apartments without paying a single cent of inheritance tax at the end of the day," but added that changes must be made carefully so businesses can keep operating.