Court of Auditors urges planned coalition to exercise budgetary discipline

Despite the expected increase in tax revenue, the Court of Auditors is calling for restraint from the upcoming state government. You should use the additional money to reduce the multi-billion dollar corona loans. The experts also see several expensive problems in the country.

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How. The President of the Court of Auditors, Gaby Schäfer, has called on the planned coalition of the CDU and the Greens in Schleswig-Holstein to be economical. “The announced increase in income of 3.3 billion euros will trigger many new spending requests,” said Schäfer on Friday about the comments of the Court of Auditors on the budget. “However, the state government is well advised to use the high additional income primarily to reduce debt.” According to the current tax estimate, the country can expect an average of 660 million euros more per year by 2026, explained the Court of Auditors.

The North is making too much debt. “At almost 11,000 euros per capita, debt in Schleswig-Holstein is twice as high as the national average,” the comments read. In view of rising interest rates, this means a further budgetary burden in the medium term. Only in Saarland is the per capita debt higher among the non-city states.

Experts warned that high inflation and a weaker economy would inevitably lead to a loss of prosperity. “Therefore, the state government must set priorities more than before and not finance new challenges exclusively with new loans.” The corona-related tax slump has been overcome. “The Corona emergency loan is clearly oversized and should be repaid.” In 2020, the state parliament approved a loan authorization totaling 5.5 billion euros to deal with the crisis, of which 1.4 billion were earmarked for tax shortfalls up to 2024.

2.5 billion euros were planned for the modernization of the infrastructure. “They should not have been taken out as a loan because they had nothing to do with the Corona emergency from the start,” the report says. Despite more than 34 billion euros in debt, Schleswig-Holstein is also the only state to have approved an emergency loan of 400 million euros for the accommodation of the Ukraine refugees. It was provided from the Corona emergency loan, formally no new loans would be taken out. “This was possible because the Corona emergency loan is no longer needed in full as a result of the improved tax revenue. In fact, it should have been repaid at this level.”

Finance Minister Monika Heinold’s comment was extremely brief: “As every year, the Finance Ministry will carefully examine the comments of the State Audit Office,” said the Green Party on request.

The Court of Auditors advises overriding control of the financial aid amounting to 2.9 billion euros in the period from 2017 to 2020. There is also a lack of transparency with regard to personnel costs. The 2020 budget lists 4.5 billion euros, and a further 700 million euros for employees are paid from non-material titles. MPs could not understand how high the expenses really are.