Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats set out some of their priorities for the next German election campaign, vowing to increase taxes on the rich and loosen restrictions on government borrowing to enable a massive increase in investment in the green transition.

Kicking off a three-day party congress in Berlin overshadowed by an unresolved budget crisis, SPD Co-leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil launched scathing attacks on the opposition conservatives and the far-right AfD party, accusing them of “pure populism” and “political vandalism” that they said is damaging Germany’s reputation as a liberal democracy.