Klingbeil is planning 500 billion euros for climate protection – but skepticism is growing!

Klingbeil is planning 500 billion euros for climate protection – but skepticism is growing!

On June 24, 2025, the Federal Cabinet, led by Finance Minister Bernd Klingbeil, plans to approve the draft budget for 2025. The budget provides for expenditure of 503 billion euros, with the focus on investments, structural reforms, lowering energy prices and savings contributions. In addition, key figures for 2026 will be presented and a law for a debt-financed special fund worth 500 billion euros to promote infrastructure and climate protection will be introduced. The news was reported on June 24, 2025 on the Deutschlandfunk program, which presented the details of the upcoming plans.

The budget plans include a significant increase in the defense budget, which is expected to gradually increase to over 152 billion euros by 2029, which is almost threefold. Loans totaling almost 82 billion euros are planned for the current year, and almost 89 billion euros in loans are planned for the coming year. The cabinet decision marks the first step in legislation before the Bundestag and Bundesrat deal with the plans.

Criticism of the financing strategies

Despite the ambitious plans, there are concerns about the distribution and use of the funds. Critics fear that the Finance Ministry could use money from the planned special fund to plug budget holes. CORRECTIV reports that there was a calculation trick in which 20 billion euros were fictitiously pushed into the special fund's climate pot. However, these funds are already in the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) and were therefore never actually removed.

Former FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner tried to divert funds from the KTF to the federal budget, but this was not approved. Under the leadership of the SPD Finance Ministry, these fictitious funds could now be transferred back to the KTF, which is seen as a tactic to conceal cuts in the KTF. Andreas Audretsch from the Greens criticizes Lars Klingbeil's budget tricks and warns of possible negative effects on climate protection and the future.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Finance rejects these allegations and refers to previous decisions by the previous government. Nevertheless, critics remain skeptical that the funds are not reaching the places where they are most urgently needed.

Developments surrounding the budget plans and the handling of climate protection funds will continue to be closely monitored while political actors prepare for the upcoming votes in the Bundestag and Bundesrat.