After fierce criticism of the planned gas levy, the traffic light coalition struggled to find an alternative. Now there is an agreement: the state will limit the price increase for consumers. There is also reportedly a solution for where the money is to come from.
The governing coalition has agreed on an alternative to Habeck’s planned gas levy. This emerges from several consistent media reports. Accordingly, there is a comprehensive solution to the gas and electricity price problem, which will require a considerable but responsible use of funds. The gas surcharge will not come in order not to further increase prices for consumers. Instead, a gas price brake should come. Details are not yet known.
According to “Spiegel”, such a gas price cap will cost between 15.6 and 36.5 billion euros in the coming year. The newspaper relies on a calculation by the Hans Böckler Foundation for the federal government. The “Handelsblatt”, on the other hand, reports a volume of 150 to 200 billion euros. The funds are to be financed via the Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF), which was set up during the corona pandemic and was intended to support companies.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck originally only wanted to reform the planned gas levy in order to exclude profitable companies that did not need any support from it. The Energy Security Act should be changed for this purpose. More and more top politicians in the traffic light coalition had recently completely moved away from the planned project.
Due to the lack of Russian gas deliveries, importers such as Uniper have to procure replacements at greatly increased prices, but have not yet been able to pass them on to customers. This should actually be done via the allocation. However, in order for the importers to deliver reliably, stable financing is still required. It’s about billions of dollars. Habeck himself recently said that the levy purpose of stabilization can also be achieved by providing companies with the necessary capital requirements from public funds. That’s what it looks like now.
