Nancy Faeser discovers the criminal fighter in herself. Finally, this justifies a new step away from cash. And Christian Lindner, who mimed the cash-is-freedom fighter in 2016, has become very quiet as finance minister - just like the green data protection officer Konstantin von Notz.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser has not yet attracted attention as a dogged fighter against organized crime. When presenting the study on “Security and crime in Germany”, for example, she hardly said a word about it, but spoke all the more about the procedure against “hate and hate speech” on the Internet, which is “personally an important concern” and also “ should be considered more in everyday life".
But now she is talking about the goal of "smashing criminal structures and consistently depriving them of criminal income". The means for this should be a cash upper limit for payment transactions of 10,000 Euros. It is not a new project. In Germany, it was already being discussed in the grand coalition in 2016, but was not implemented after there was significant resistance in the Union, in the Bundesbank, but also in large parts of the economy. In the EU Commission there are plans for a uniform upper limit, in most EU countries there are already upper limits. In Italy, for example, it is 2000 Euros. There, however, the new government of Giorgia Meloni has the opposite in mind: it wants to raise the limit to 10,000 Euros.
How effective cash caps are in fighting crime is the subject of quite controversial discussions among criminologists. Of course, it is obvious that such limitations make business at least more inconvenient for criminals. However, it is just as obvious that a legal limit for notorious lawbreakers certainly does not represent an insurmountable hurdle. Handing over suitcases of money will continue to take place, but these payments will no longer be legalized quite as easily. If necessary, this “money laundering” must be carried out in many small wash cycles. The cash limit will probably only make it possible to completely “dismantle” criminal structures in the rarest of cases. Rather, it is likely to increase the organizational effort of criminals. But that is also quite helpful in the fight against them.
One wonders why Faeser and many of her fellow party members do not show the same zeal when it comes to other methods of fighting organized crime. As soon as it comes to tightened border controls and expanding the options for deporting criminal foreigners, Faeser says nothing more about the need to break up criminal structures. That's why their argument for the cash cap has so little credibility.
The suspicion is obvious that, as in 2016 in the grand coalition, other than criminalistic motives are primarily driving the political desire for the upper cash limit. The Munich economics professor Gerald Mann put it this way in 2016: “The ‘war against cash’ is also becoming more acute in Germany. The community of interest from politics, central banks and commercial banks would probably like to get rid of cash in the medium term. A salami tactic is clearly being used.”
The behavior of the FDP in the traffic light coalition will also be interesting once again. After all, the FDP MP Frank Schäffler tweeted: "A cash limit is imprisonment." But Schäffler's influence in the party and parliamentary group, let alone on the FDP leadership, is rather small.
The fact that the Federal Minister of Finance allows Faeser to present himself on an issue that actually affects the core of his department is probably a precedent. He would actually have to ask his cabinet colleague not to do that (unless the initiative was coordinated). Especially since Lindner claimed just a few days ago that "there was no talk of abolishing cash". However, he himself had just expressed his sympathy for the so-called “digital cash”, which of course is not cash, but only a form of bank money that can be used like cash.
In any case, Lindner has been tweeting since Faeser's initiative about the "Founder's Week", the imprisoned Russian opposition member Alexei Navalny and the Bavarian parliamentary group leader Martin Hagen, but not about Faeser's demand for a maximum cash limit. He didn't even have to think about a wording. He only has to quote himself: “Cash is lived freedom. It is part of a life of freedom that we can decide how we pay, what we buy and who we give our money to.” He said this to Anne Will in 2016 and took part in a tabloid campaign called “Hands off our cash!“
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