| Zusammenfassung: | With the trough of the recession following the global financial market crisis having been passed, fiscal policy is faced with the need to return to a sustainable path. The federal government targets a reduction of the general government deficit (in the Maastricht definition) below the ceiling of 3 percent of GDP as from 2012; subsequently, the deficit is to be lowered stepwise to 2.2 percent of GDP by 2014, with the public debt ratio levelling off at around 72 percent of GDP. Underlying the consolidation path for the period from 2011 to 2014 is a government programme that assigns, from an overall federal perspective, slightly more than half of deficit reduction to expenditure restraint, and somewhat less than half to higher taxes. For the federal budget, the expected savings cumulate to € 8.1 billion, while additional revenues amount to some € 6 billion.
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