The Bielefeld legal scholar Simon Kempny sees several violations of the constitution in the preparation of the North Rhine-Westphalian budget last year. Exceptions to the debt brake enshrined in the Basic Law must be honestly weighed up and documented, warned the attorney for the SPD and FDP on Monday in Düsseldorf. That was not recognizable in the black-green budget preparation process for 2022.

The two opposition factions are complaining to the Münster Constitutional Court on three counts against the preparation process for the state budget. The core is the “special fund” to deal with the consequences of the Ukraine war, for which the Budget Act 2023 will release credit authorizations of up to five billion euros.

“This is a pot of new debt,” Kempny explained the term. The budget law of the state parliament was also violated when the state government took on 4.15 billion euros in new debt “without any recognizable need” last autumn, although at the time not even the billion-dollar Corona special fund had to be fully utilized. The law professor warned that the constitution does not allow credit-financed reserves just to have a comfortable financial buffer next year.

According to him, the new special fund was “invented” when, after vehement criticism from the state audit office and other experts, it became clear that the money left over from the Corona rescue package could not be rebooked for other budgetary purposes. However, the Minister of Finance failed to adequately explain why an emergency situation existed that did not allow any alternative to circumventing the debt brake.

SPD parliamentary group leader Thomas Kutschaty (SPD) spoke of the “most chaotic budget deliberations that Parliament had to endure”. After intensively examining the back and forth in the black-green budgetary policy in the months of October to December 2022, the opposition has now decided to attack. The complaint is ready and will be filed immediately.

The lawsuit before the Constitutional Court will not be conducted in an expedited procedure because a careful examination of the main issue is required, explained Kempny. “This is new territory for North Rhine-Westphalia.”

Several aid measures have already been launched with the millions from the special fund. In view of the constitutional lawsuit, the state parliament will certainly not make it easy for itself to approve further tranches, said the university professor for public law. Until the decision of the highest court, however, it cannot be ruled out “that the breach of the constitution will be deepened”.

FDP faction leader Henning Höne accused the CDU/FDP coalition of “poor governance with a crowbar.” Black and green have disqualified themselves with their chaotic budget. In fact, there would have been enough surpluses last year to get early help going with savings elsewhere without new debt, said the Free Democrat.

Some of the tasks now financed from the special fund are overdue anyway and have no acute connection to the crisis, he complained. This applies, for example, to the emergency power supply of authorities or the improvement of civil protection. Black-Green was simply about comfortably financing announcements from their coalition agreement.