# Development Minister Pushes for Debt Brake Carve-Out to Stop Ukraine Aid From Shrinking Further > Germany's development minister, Reem Alabali-Radovan, is pushing for a constitutional exemption from the country's debt brake dedicated to Ukraine funding, warning that repeated budget cuts have already shrunk civilian aid to less than half of its 2023 level even as Russian attacks intensify. - Source: Berlin Today - Canonical URL: https://berlintoday.eu/article/development-minister-pushes-for-debt-brake-carve-out-to-stop-ukraine-aid-from-shrinking-further - Author: Doug Brown - Section: Politics - Published: 2026-10-17T13:51:31.046Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T13:51:31.046Z - Tags: Germany, Ukraine, debt brake, Reem Alabali-Radovan, budget, coalition government, SPD, CDU --- Germany's development minister, Reem Alabali-Radovan of the Social Democrats, is lobbying for a dedicated carve-out from the country's constitutional debt brake so that funding for Ukraine can keep flowing without being squeezed by the same borrowing limits that apply to the rest of the federal budget. The push comes as her ministry's own numbers show just how much civilian support for Ukraine has already shrunk. This year's allocation sits at roughly €330 million, down sharply from €670 million in 2022 and €750 million in 2023, a decline she argues is now undercutting Germany's ability to sustain the kind of support Kyiv has come to rely on. ## A Stark Warning From the Minister Alabali-Radovan framed the stakes bluntly, arguing that Russian attacks are only getting worse, bringing more deaths, more destruction and more suffering, even as development assistance budgets keep shrinking. Her point was that continuing the current trajectory of cuts would make it impossible to hold support for Ukraine at anything close to its current level, let alone scale it up to match the worsening situation on the ground. She also used her platform at the IMF and World Bank meetings to argue that other countries need to step up their own contributions, suggesting Germany cannot be expected to keep absorbing the gap left by multi-year budget commitments that leave little flexibility for responding to an active crisis. ## Support From the Foreign Ministry, Resistance Inside the CDU The proposal has a notable backer in Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul of the CDU, giving it some cross-party credibility rather than leaving it as a purely SPD initiative. But it is running into resistance from within Wadephul's own party, where some lawmakers are wary of opening up further exemptions to borrowing rules beyond the defense spending carve-out already agreed. That split illustrates the broader tension inside Germany's coalition: the CDU-led government has already accepted that defense spending needs room to breathe outside the debt brake, but extending similar treatment to development and Ukraine-specific aid is a harder sell to fiscal conservatives within the chancellor's own party. ## Why It Matters Germany has positioned itself as one of Ukraine's most important backers in Europe, and a steady decline in civilian aid funding complicates that image even as military support remains a political priority. Whether Alabali-Radovan can convert her warning into an actual constitutional exemption will likely hinge on how much the debate over defense borrowing has softened CDU resistance to widening the debt brake's exceptions more broadly. --- Originally published by Berlin Today. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://berlintoday.eu/article/development-minister-pushes-for-debt-brake-carve-out-to-stop-ukraine-aid-from-shrinking-further.