Flood risk in Germany reignites coalition fight over debt rules

BERLIN — A widespread risk of floods in Germany has prompted renewed infighting within the country’s tripartite ruling coalition over calls to relax strict debt rules to provide aid to those affected.

Rising water levels across large swaths of Germany in recent weeks have led to calls among members of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens for increased federal aid. Rolf Mützenich, the SPD’s parliamentary group chair, has called for new spending on flood aid to be counted outside Germany’s regular budget in order to circumvent the country’s constitutional debt brake, which restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 percent of GDP except in emergencies.

“It is not a question of doing the calculations, but of the political will for the federal government to contribute to managing the damage,” Mützenich was quoted as saying on X, formerly Twitter.

Leaders of the fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) — a party in the ruling coalition with the SPD and Greens — hit back at those proposals.

“Anyone who has to pump water out their cellar these days is certainly not concerned with budget issues or the debt brake,” Christian Dürr, the chair of the FDP’s parliamentary group, told POLITICO. “Of course the federal government will not abandon anyone in the affected areas, but this can also be done without taking on new debt.”

This disagreement over how to deal with the floods is the latest spat within the ruling coalition as it struggles to finalize a 2024 budget and plug a multi-billion euro gap through a series of cost-cutting measures.

Members of the left-leaning SPD and Greens have called for reforms of the debt brake to make it easier to invest in Germany’s infrastructure and economy.

The federal government has suspended the debt brake by declaring emergencies for four years in a row. Under a draft budget deal reached last month, the ruling coalition committed to upholding the debt brake in 2024, barring a worsening of the conflict in Ukraine that would require Germany to provide additional financial support.

FPD leaders in particular have pushed back against calls from politicians in the SPD and Greens to suspend the debt brake once more in 2024.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the size of the budget gap for 2024.