After weeks of wrangling and despite poor poll ratings and much disagreement on substantive issues, the top representatives of the three-way coalition — the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) — managed to agree on a draft for the 2025 budget at the beginning of July.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) then went on vacation, but back home in Germany, the budget quickly became a hotly disputed topic again.

Last week, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) announced that some points in the deal would have to be renegotiated. Experts in his ministry concluded that they may be unconstitutional. According to Lindner, this would cost €5 billion ($5.46 billion) to the draft budget.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video

The economic and legal experts found fault with the plan to reallocate money from a fund set up in 2022 to mitigate the impact of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine on the price of natural gas in Germany. Of that fund, known as the........

© Deutsche Welle