Dresden (dpa / sn) – The Dresden Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) has warned against weighing yourself in security after gas deliveries from Russia have started again. “The danger of massive distortions for our economy seems to have been averted immediately, but we mustn’t make the mistake of swallowing a tranquilizer pill now,” said Lukas Rohleder, General Manager of the IHK on Thursday. The situation could also change again quickly: “We simply don’t know, so the danger remains latent.”
According to Rohleder, security of supply depends on tapping all available energy sources. In this context, costs that have already risen massively should not be disregarded. “Our companies will not be able to shoulder this in the long term, which is why we need rapid provision of liquidity support and grants for companies that are particularly hard hit, and an abolition or reduction of taxes and levies on energy, so that we do not fall further behind, at least in intra-European competition.”
“After the companies have really set a lot of levers in motion to optimize their energy consumption, the recommendation of the politicians to switch to other energy sources seems like poisoned advice to me,” said the head of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. In view of lengthy processing times and approval procedures as well as unresolved liability issues, this unfortunately has to be said so clearly. “We are facing a possible emergency situation with effects that would not only affect individual companies or sectors via production and logistics chains, but the entire German economy and its employees.”
After ten days of maintenance on the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, the gas supply through the German-Russian gas pipeline started to ramp up on Thursday morning. Gas is flowing again, a spokesman for Nord Stream AG told the German Press Agency.
