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.