Mr. Lindner, the German finance Minister is an ardent proponent of returning to the debt brake as quickly as possible. “The decision to extend the escape clause shouldn’t be seen as a precedent or a prelude to reform of the fiscal rules”
“We need to stop intervening in the market economy with these big state spending programmes”
Mr. Lindner has to convince the new elected French President who wants to lead the EU and who is not exactly a fiscal hawk, he is a Keynesian, in favour of the “whatever it costs” to protect the French people against the covid, inflation, etc.
He also has to convince Ms. von der Leyen, the imperialist leader of the EU Commission, that it is time to stop common borrowing from the Commission under the pretext that common borrowing is free since nobody is at the end accountable (an idea that highly indebted countries love). What was “one time decision” has a tendency to repeat itself under the permanent pressure of the bureaucracy.
The excessive QE provided by the ECB has comforted the idea of big spenders that they can continue to spend with deficit financing without economic consequences. The first consequence is inflation, the second is excessive debt followed by a financial crisis on the euro.
The idea to use frozen FX to cover the cost of rebuilding Ukraine after the war, seems a wrong good idea. This money does not belong to the EU, it is not confiscated but frozen and should theoretically be returned to its owner (the CBR) if Russia reach a peace agreement with Ukraine. The EU (and certainly not the EC) is not a belligerent directly involved in this war.