Horrendous heating and electricity prices are putting traffic lights under pressure. In order to help citizens through the crisis, the federal and state governments must work together. However, a draft decision by the Chancellery for the summit on Wednesday does not present any new ideas.
Before the federal-state talks about the federal government’s planned third relief package, the Federal Chancellery sent an initial proposal for a resolution to the federal states. In the 9-point draft, which is available to ntv.de, point 5 says, “The Federal Chancellor and the heads of government of the federal states agree that overcoming the challenges caused by the crisis is a task for the entire state. The one with the tax The federal, state and local governments therefore jointly bear the loss of revenue associated with measures in accordance with the respective distribution key. Because this is a contentious passage, the paragraph is placed in square brackets.
At the beginning of September, the traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP decided on a third relief package worth 65 billion euros for 2022 and 2023, in which the federal states should also participate. Next Wednesday, the prime ministers want to talk to Chancellor Olaf Scholz about the financing. The federal states had criticized that they had not been included in the traffic light decisions and are threatening a blockade in the Bundesrat.
The draft by the Chancellery contains a list of the traffic light decisions from the beginning of September, all of which are now in square brackets after criticism from the federal states: These include, for example, the increase in child benefit and the child supplement, the introduction of citizen income on January 1st , the housing benefit reform or the one-off heating cost subsidy for students. With regard to the successor regulation of the 9-euro ticket, the Chancellery paper also repeats the original suggestion of the traffic light that the federal government would subsidize the project with 1.5 billion euros. This contribution had already been criticized by the federal states as too low.
While the currently hotly disputed gas levy, which would come into force on October 1 as things stand at present, does not appear at all in the draft resolution, the paper notes an agreement between the federal and state governments to relieve citizens of electricity prices. However, this task is delegated to the European level. With regard to the dramatically increased heating costs, point 7 states that the federal and state governments see “further need for action on the prices for gas and heat”.
In point 9, the Chancellery lists – also in square brackets – various demands from the federal states: This includes a protective shield for municipal utilities, subsidies for hospital financing, assumption of the costs for care and accommodation for refugees and an increase in federal funds for financing local transport .
The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder expressed strong criticism of the draft. The text proposed by the Chancellery included neither the decisions of the finance ministers of the federal states nor those of the transport ministers. He also does not go into the immensely increasing costs for the issue of asylum. If it stayed that way, the present resolution would have a zero value, said Söder. “That would be a pure, stubborn continuation as it has been for weeks.” If the federal states should continue to pay without being able to have a say, this cannot be approved, said the CSU boss in Munich.
