In the end, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and former Finance Minister Christian Lindner only agreed on one point: their cooperation failed because of the debt brake.

Scholz had wanted to suspend this limit on Berlin’s ability to borrow funds based on the country’s economic output, in order to meet the demands of a struggling economy. But Lindner insisted on keeping it, referring to the oath he took when he became finance minister in 2021.

Claim: “The chancellor finally demanded that I suspend the federal debt brake. I could not accept this because I would have violated my oath of office,” Lindner said in a statement on November 6 after having been sacked by Scholz, triggering the collapse of the coalition government of their two parties, alongside the Greens.

DW Fact Check: Misleading

The debt brake was not part of Lindner’s oath of office. When he was sworn in as Finance Minister on December 8, 2021 in the German Bundestag, the leader of the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) made the following vow: “I swear that I will devote my strength to the well-being of the German people . , increase its profit, avoid harm, uphold and defend the Basic Law and the laws of the Federation, conscientiously fulfill my duties and provide justice to all. So help me, God.

The oath of office does not contain any specific obligation regarding the debt brake. However, he refers to the Basic Law, the German Constitution, which, in Article 115, stipulates that “revenue and expenditure must in principle be balanced without income from borrowing” – basically, that the state cannot spend only the amount of money necessary. In.

Aid to Ukraine ‘difficult to justify’

While individual states are subject to an absolute ban on borrowing, the federal government is permitted to borrow net up to a maximum of 0.35% of economic output. For example: the gross domestic product in 2022 amounted to approximately 3.88 trillion euros ($4.07 billion), which means that the federal government was allowed to take on approximately 13 billion euros in additional debt .

But back to Lindner’s claim that a suspension would have violated his oath of office. “There is room for interpretation here,” said Friedrich Heinemann, professor of public finance at the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research.

“Following the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in November 2023, Lindner can assert that debt-financed aid to Ukraine is currently difficult to justify under the Basic Law,” he told DW, in reference to a judgment invalidating a budget law authorizing Berlin. borrow in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The law did not meet constitutional requirements for emergency borrowing, the court said.

“The view that he was forced to violate the Basic Law is possible,” Heinemann said, which, according to his interpretation, would also be contrary to Lindner’s oath of office.

The budget law is a matter for the Bundestag

Finance does not directly decide on the suspension of the debt brake. This is the task of the German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, which exercises budgetary law. Lindner’s task as finance minister would have been to present a draft budget for a vote by its members.

In 2022, the Bundestag decided to borrow hundreds of billions of euros via the aforementioned finance law by making use of the exception to the debt brake, as it had already done for the financial years 2020 and 2021 , referring to an “extraordinary emergency situation”. due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

In principle, the Basic Law allows the suspension of the debt brake “in the event of natural disasters or unusual emergency situations beyond the control of the government.”

During the debate on the 2024 budget, Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party and the environmentalist Greens once again called for the declaration of an emergency situation due to the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis.

Experts, however, consider this a difficult argument. Stefan Korioth, a specialist in financial constitutional law at the University of Munich, told the Berlin daily The Tagesspiegel that such an emergency should be a “shock-like event from outside, uncontrollable and significantly altering the financial position of the federal government.”

The consequences of the war in Ukraine may well serve as justification, “however, the war broke out some time ago, and over time it becomes more and more difficult to explain why the German state is currently under an extraordinary burden.” “Korioth said.

Conclusion: Scholz urged Lindner to lift the debt brake, but not directly violate his oath of office. Yet the oath of office is subject to interpretation. It also remains unclear whether such a planned suspension of the debt brake would be overturned again by the Federal Constitutional Court.

This article was originally written in German.