How will Germany spend its €1 trillion loans? |
Berlin's airport, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg, the Stuttgart 21 railway station — there is no shortage of inglorious examples of major projects in Germany that got out of hand. Planning errors, construction errors, exploding cost, legal disputes, years of delays — the list is long.
The reasons are manifold, ranging from planning mistakes to lengthy approval procedures to a shortage of materials on the construction sites.
The likely future government of the center-right bloc of Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union CDU/CSU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has secured approval from the lower and upper houses of parliament, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, for constitutional change paving the way for unlimited defense spending and €500 billion ($542 bn) to be invested in infrastructure and climate protection over the next twelve years.
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The German Taxpayers Association (BdSt) believes this decision to have been a mistake. Although there is a serious backlog in investment, BdSt President Reiner Holznagel told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper that lack of financial resources is not the problem. "Germany is suffocating because of bureaucracy and inefficient structures. We need faster approval procedures and clear responsibilities! But a new debt fund does not solve any of these problems," he said.
Economist Veronika Grimm........