The Schuldenbremse, or “debt brake,” requires the federal government to run a structural deficit of no more than 0.35% of GDP by 2016, while Germany’s Länder will be banned from running structural deficits at all as of 2020. The current federal government will certainly abide by these rules, which implies reducing the structural deficit to approximately €10 billion by 2016 – a reduction of about €7 billion a year.
这也是德国为何决定在2009年将严格的财政规定写入宪法的原因。“债务刹车”(Schuldenbremse)要求联邦政府在2016年实现结构性赤字不超过GDP0.35%的水平，而德国联邦州(Länder)则在2020年时禁止产生任何结构性赤字。当前的联邦政府当然会遵守这些规定，其中包含在2016年将结构性赤字降到100亿欧元的水平——这相当于每年减少70亿欧元。