Over the last decade, a number of polls have tended to solidify the idea that Germans across the political spectrum were strong supporters of the constitutional debt brake adopted in 2009 and thus reluctant to reform it.
In that context, Germany’s center-right and right-wing parties in particular have shied away from making strong proposals to reform the debt brake in the current election campaign. In its electoral program, the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) commit themselves to the debt brake, while the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) rule out any reform. The Greens call for a significant easing of fiscal policy, while the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) demand a reform of the debt brake.
The opinions of German voters about the virtues of the constitutional debt brake seem, however, to be shifting more markedly. A new representative poll by Forsa conducted for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) shows that for the first time a majority of Germans want the debt brake to be changed.
In detail: According to the poll conducted in January 2025, 55 percent of Germans think the debt brake should be reformed to allow Berlin to raise more debt to finance higher investment spending or be cancelled all together. A minority of 41 percent of Germans want to keep the debt brake unchanged.
Support for Reform Across the Left-Right divide
Two of the survey’s findings are worth noting.
First, a majority of 55 percent of voters for the center-right CDU/CSU and even 41 percent of FDP voters want the debt brake to be loosened or abandoned.
Although support for debt brake reform among voters of the SPD (66 percent) and the Greens (85 percent) is clearly higher, the issue is not a clear left-right issue, despite how it is often presented.
Moreover, the FDP result is particularly surprising, as the party is campaigning as the ultimate guarantor of fiscal orthodoxy and justified exiting Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s traffic-light coalition by pointing to the need to respect the debt brake.
Second, the 55 percent in support of changing or cancelling the debt brake in the January survey is a marked shift from November 2024. Then, according to the Forsa poll, a minority of 44 percent wanted to reform or cancel the debt brake. In July 2024, it was only 32 percent.
Germans Want Higher Levels of Public Investment
This headline shift in Germans’ opinion about the debt brake may be explained by the debate about fiscal policy that took place during the term of the outgoing government.
Key to the 2021 SPD-Green-FDP coalition agreement was an off-budget Climate and Transformation Fund, which was created to bypass the debt brake. The fund was ruled unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in November 2023. That decision created fundamental disagreements within the coalition on fiscal policy, which ultimately prompted the FDP to quit the coalition government over the 2025 budget.
The ruling by the Constitutional Court and the fact that Germany’s economy has been stagnating for the past five years has also prompted a wider debate among federal and state-level politicians about the need to change the debt brake. The German Council of Economic Experts, the Deutsche Bundesbank, and multiple economic research institutions have come up with a flurry of ideas and suggestions to modernize the debt brake over the past year.
In addition to this debate, the shift in German voter attitudes might also be explained by the fact that there seems to be a consensus on the need for higher levels of public investment.
A majority of Germans want to see more investment in education (87 percent), transport (67 percent), health (65 percent), domestic security (63 percent), defense (57 percent), and energy infrastructure (53 percent), the poll shows. In contrast, only a minority want to increase investments in climate and environment protection (40 percent) and social security (39 percent), highlighting a clear hierarchy of priorities for any increase in spending.
Again, the support for higher investments is shared across the left-right divide. For instance, a majority of CDU/CSU voters want to see more investment in education (89 percent), domestic security (67 percent), defense (67 percent), transport (65 percent), health (52 percent), and energy infrastructure (53 percent). A minority of CDU voters want more investment in energy (46 percent ), climate (35 percent ), and social security (27 percent).
Raise Debt Rather than Forego Investments
Our contention with past polls is that they often asked the question about a reform of the debt brake in a very blunt and binary way, which masked the underlying policy trade-offs behind these choices.
In this poll we thus attempted to highlight the trade-offs by asking those surveyed how they would ideally like to finance the additional investments they deem necessary. If given the choice, 59 percent of Germans want investments to be financed by savings in other budget areas, while 21 percent want to raise more debt, and 13 percent are willing to increase taxes.
Germany’s problem today, however, is that the space for spending cuts is relatively limited given that 90 percent of the 2024 federal budget is allotted to “fixed expenditures,” such as pensions and salaries, according to the Federal Audit Office. Only 10 percent of the federal budget (€47.7 billion, or 1 percent of GDP) is thus discretionary spending, where potentially savings can be made in the medium-term.
Moreover, the Forsa-DGAP poll also shows that there are no majorities for cutting spending in any of the surveyed areas. Germans are most willing to cut climate and environment spending (21 percent), followed by social security systems (19 percent), defense (14 percent), and energy (7 percent). It seems hard to coalesce a strong majority for cuts to social spending or even pensions, which would be needed to gain meaningful fiscal space.
Hence, we have asked Germans what the government should do if investments cannot be financed through savings alone. A clear majority of 56 percent would then want to raise new debt, while 38 percent would prefer to forego investments.
The results according to support for political parties show again that there is no fundamental left-right divide. Faced with a trade-off, 64 percent of CDU/CSU voters are in favor of raising debt, and only 32 percent would like to forego investments. In comparison, 70 percent of SPD voters are in favor of raising debt and 25 percent would rather cancel investments.
It is worth noting that the voters of the left-populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) also want to ease the debt brake (42 percent) or abolish it altogether (17 percent). The BSW is often viewed as a party that, together with the far-right AfD, would be likely to oppose a constitutional amendment to reform the debt brake.
A Fiscal Zeitenwende
German politics and its economy are undergoing a period of profound change.
With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the reelection of US President Donald Trump, Germany must quickly take on greater responsibility for its security and spend more on defense.
The old export-driven economic model has reached its limits, as trade partners become more protectionist and business models change. Reigniting growth in Germany necessitates many changes, from signing new free trade agreements to liberalizing the country’s rigid labor laws. But to exit the current economic malaise, investment in infrastructure and energy amongst others are needed to boost productivity growth and support domestic demand.
Additional spending needs, as identified in this poll, span transport to defense. This also suggests a more comprehensive reform of the debt brake may be required, rather than simply enabling more investment at the federal level by way of new off-budget fund, such as the €100-billion defense Sondervermögen passed in 2022. Many of the identified policy areas are under the purview of federal states or local authorities. As for defense, experts point out that there needs to be at least a 10-year spending horizon to obtain planning security and sufficiently boost capacities.
Germans themselves seem to realize that the world of old certainties is no more. Its politics and by extension fiscal policy must change accordingly. That a majority of Germans now support a reform of the debt brake to allow for increased investments is testimony to the fact that Germans are ready for a fiscal Zeitenwende. The next government can be sure of public support if it seeks a grand bargain combining savings in existing spending with a modernization of the debt brake.
Note: The Forsa-DGAP poll was conducted between January 10 and 14, 2025. The full results can be accessed here.
Joseph de Weck is IPQ’s Paris columnist and senior fellow at the Institut Montaigne.
Shahin Vallée is senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations’ (DGAP) Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology.
