The Reminder Has Arrived

In February we wrote: “The reminder is arriving now.” In the meantime it has landed on the table, and it is being paid with new debt.

I. The drive along the A 45

“The Black Zero” began at the Rahmede valley bridge near Lüdenscheid, a structure from 1968 that failed in 2021 after exactly the service life that was known when it was built. On 26 October 2026 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung drove the same route. Its correspondent Patrick Welter counted sixteen bridge construction sites on roughly 145 kilometres between Giessen and Hagen, one every nine kilometres on average. The first half of the new Rahmede bridge has been open to traffic since last year; the Rälsbach and Rinsdorf valley bridges were completed after nine years of construction. Lorries over 44 tonnes are still largely barred from the motorway because of the crumbling bridges, and a sign at a new construction site near Wenden reads: until 2030.

Things are moving forward. But they are moving forward as slowly as they went downhill before.

II. Where the money goes

In spring 2025 the CDU/CSU and SPD agreed on the “Special Fund for Infrastructure and Climate Neutrality”, 500 billion euros of new debt over twelve years. The Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), together with WWF, has calculated what is becoming of it. The share of future-oriented spending in the entire federal budget rises this year to 23.1 per cent, higher than ever since comparisons began in 2018. In the core budget, however, it falls to 16.2 per cent, more than four points lower than in 2023. Investment migrates into the debt pot, and room is made in the regular budget for other things. In addition, 100 billion of the 500 billion go to the federal states and municipalities without any obligation to spend them on infrastructure.

The president of the Ifo Institute, Clemens Fuest, says: “If this continues, there is a danger that we will end up with more debt, but without renovated infrastructure.”

Meanwhile the backlog keeps growing. In February, citing KfW, we gave a figure of over 186 billion euros for the municipalities. The KfW municipal panel for 2026 arrives at 231.2 billion, 68.9 billion of it for schools alone.

III. The economists’ diagnosis

What is the cause? Fuest answers in the F.A.Z. that the state has raised its spending to more than half of economic output: “The only remedy is to limit the sprawling public sector.” Stefan Kooths of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy recommends a motorway toll combined with lower fuel tax; investors, he says, prefer countries with low taxes where you pay extra for the road.

This is the diagnosis that led to the disease. The bridges of the A 45 did not decay under a sprawling state, but under the black zero, when every euro not invested counted as thrift. Whoever demands less state today is demanding the continuation of the policy whose consequences can be inspected on the Sauerland line.

IV. Money does not build a bridge

On one point the F.A.Z. is nonetheless right, and it says so itself: only faster planning and construction procedures can change the fact that such renovations take many years, not more money. The OECD names lengthy planning and approval as the main reason for the investment backlog.

This is the second half of the story, and we told it in the same month as the first. “The Hollowed-Out State” (in German) was about a state that no longer knows anything and can no longer do anything. The Rahmede bridge had been known to be crumbling for seven years before it was closed. The engineers who could plan and inspect bridges and assess construction contracts were cut back over thirty years and replaced by consultants. The black zero took the money from the state; privatisation policy took its competence. The money can be brought back by a law, overnight. Competence takes a generation.

V. Who profits

That leaves the question missing from the debate. The 500 billion euros will cost interest for decades. It is paid from taxes, and it flows to the holders of federal bonds. How this works we described in “The Other Side of the Coin” using the example of France. The same applies in Germany.

So the public pays twice. Once with the bridges that decayed during the black zero, and then with the interest on the money with which they are now being replaced. Those who saved taxes and built up wealth in the years of the black zero now earn from the repair. The reminder has arrived. It is just being sent to the wrong addresses.

Back to the essay: The Black Zero · Further reading: The Hollowed-Out State (German) · The Other Side of the Coin · The Special Fund · It Has to Get Bad First