German Finance Minister Christian Lindner stressed in an interview he gave yesterday Saturday to the newspaper Rheinische Post that austerity measures are inevitable to cover the huge gaps in the budget.

The leader of the Liberal Democrats (FDP) said the federal government must be ready for spending cuts and other unpleasant decisions. “Every allocation of funds must be discussed and justified,” added Lindner.

The three-party governing coalition (SPD, Greens, FDP) has delayed drawing up the 2024 budget due to internal disputes. The draft budget must be approved by the cabinet by June 21 and voted on by the federal parliament in December.

Describing the scale of the problem, Lindner said: “On today’s terms, we will have a deficit of 14-18 billion euros next year, with revenues of around 424 billion. In order to cover this hole in the budget, sacrifices will have to be made.”

Germany’s finance minister noted that the impact of potential public sector wage increases must be considered amid civil servants’ strikes across the country.

He criticized previous Conservative-led governments for approving “social benefits and subsidies that were not sustainably funded” in recent years. Abnormally low interest rates masked that fact, he argued.

The representative of K.O. of the Social Democrats (SPD) on budget matters, Dennis Rode, commented to the German News Agency (dpa) that “the final decision on the money spent in Germany belongs to the Bundestag and not to the finance minister”, expressing the belief that the golden ratio will be found in the disagreements that exist about fiscal policy.