Zusätzlichkeit der Investitionen des Bundes aus dem SVIK aus finanzpolitischer Sicht

Criticism of the Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality (SVIK) has recently culminated in the accusation that transfers from the core budget to the SVIK represent a misuse of funds and violate the principle of additionality. From a fiscal policy perspective, this accusation is misguided, because budget transfers do not preclude fiscal additionality. From the point of view of fiscal policy (unlike from a purely budgetary or constitutional perspective), compliance with the additionality principle is assessed primarily by comparing the investments in the current fiscal plan with the planned investments under the previous government (the traffic-light coalition). The assessment in this paper differs from previous analyses by explicitly taking into account the high savings requirements faced by the traffic-light coalition. Only a counterfactual investment scenario based on the fiscal planning under the traffic-light coalition can plausibly demonstrate the fiscal policy stimulus provided by the SVIK. The comparison with the counterfactual scenario shows that €168.3 billion out of a total of €176.9 billion – and thus around 95 % of the SVIK’s planned investments up to 2028 – are additional from a fiscal policy perspective. This renders the accusation of “fund-shuffling” meaningless, at least as regards to the federal share of the SVIK.