Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann has given a clear rejection of requests for unused credit authorizations in the billions. “Corona loans cannot simply be rededicated and reused for other purposes,” said the Green politician on Tuesday in Stuttgart. “The debt brake makes strict legal requirements.” The country took out emergency loans for a clear purpose – namely to combat the pandemic and its consequences. After the final bill, the core of the debt will be repaid. Anything else would be dishonest.
Baden-Württemberg has so far spent 9.3 billion euros to overcome the Corona crisis – a good third less than initially feared by the green-black state government. Originally, the state parliament had approved so-called credit authorizations of 14.6 billion euros for the fight against the pandemic. So now there is a kind of “buffer” of 5.3 billion euros – and that arouses both criticism and greed in the parliamentary groups. The SPD had called for the untouched billions to be used for investments in schools, hospitals and care, for example.
