Commentary on the austerity package for Hanover: A test for green and red
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The city of Hanover’s new austerity course will have to break taboos
Hard times: The town hall decreed a strict austerity course.
© Source: Tim Schaarschmidt
Hanover. For many years, the city of Hanover has prescribed one round of savings after the other – and yet it doesn’t come up with anything green. This is mainly due to the fact that the city has always provided itself with taboo zones, around which the red pencil had to give a wide berth. That is changing now.
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No feel-good savings package
Times are crisis-ridden: corona pandemic, energy crisis, inflation and thousands of refugees that Hanover will have to accommodate in the coming months. The city is deep in the red. Therefore, the green-red city leaders cannot put another feel-good savings package on the table, instead Mayor Belit Onay and treasurer Axel von der Ohe have to resort to tougher means.
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Will green and red go along?
The city wants to put everything to the test much more consistently than in previous years: are all the clubs in the city’s list of grants really worthy of support? Can the city still afford museums and cultural institutions? And do we really need many offices twice – once for the city and once for the region? Basically, the city should have asked itself such questions long ago. The omission also contributes to the fact that the financial situation is so miserable. Onay’s step and von der Ohes still deserve respect.
But will the green-red council majority also go along with it? In fact, the new austerity package is the coalition’s first serious test. It cannot be ruled out that the Greens in particular fear alienating their electoral clientele with severe cuts in the cultural and social spheres. But the alternative is unlikely to please the Greens either, because it would mean reducing investments and stopping school renovations. Green-Red is well advised not to make party-political decisions on the new austerity course, but in the interests of the entire city.