After weeks of political wrangling and tough austerity decisions, the German parliament’s budget committee approved a budget for 2024 on Thursday evening with expenditure of around €476.8 billion ($517.8 billion) and new loans totalling around €39 billion. The lower house, the Bundestag, and the upper house, the Bundesrat, are due to make a final decision on the 2024 budget at the beginning of February, but the so-called “clean-up meeting” of the powerful budget committee is already considered a decisive stage on the way to adoption in parliament. The most important issues have now been clarif…