The Bundestag has passed the gas and electricity price brake. All consumers will be relieved, regardless of their income. In an interview with ntv.de, Ulrich Schneider from the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband criticized that. According to him, there would have been better alternatives.

ntv.de: You play privately in a rock band. What would your song be for the gas and electricity price brake? “Stairway to Heaven” or “Highway to Hell”?

Ulrich Schneider: I can’t think of a rock song to go with this electricity and gas price brake. Rock is supple, rock rocks, I don’t think it rocks that much, it wobbles. The brakes are meant to relieve people, but the people who need help the most will experience the least relief. 80 percent of the consumption of the last year is capped. In plain language, this means that those who spent a lot on electricity last year and have savings potential will get away with it very cheaply. The villa owner who goes less to his home sauna saved the 20 percent. On the other hand, a person in poorly insulated social housing has no way of saving energy. How come? It’s not up to him whether windows are renewed or how the building is insulated.

These are two striking examples. But another example would be the widow who lives in a big house and gets cold easily.

Then the question is, what kind of widow is this? Is she rich or poor? Is this her own house or is she renting? Is it possible to install a heat pump and replace the windows or not? It depends on how wealthy someone is. Saving energy first requires an investment. And not everyone can afford that.

But doesn’t everyone suffer from the high prices and therefore need relief?

no Not everyone suffers from the prices. We had a savings rate of about 14 percent last year. That was one of the highest savings rates ever measured in the Federal Republic. But there are very few households that save a lot. We have sections of the population who don’t mind if the price of gas or electricity triples. They will continue to drive their fuel-guzzling SUVs, even if a liter costs three euros.

Is that really that many?

Well, at least a third of the population belongs to the wealthy, who can also save well. That’s a lot. This begs the question: if you take so many billions into your hands, does it make sense to serve this one-third as well? With limited resources, it would have made a lot more sense to focus on those income brackets that are really on the bottom end and don’t know how to get to the end of the month. It’s not just the prices for electricity and gas that have risen, but also for groceries. Recipients of Hartz IV fall by the wayside, they only get a measly compensation for inflation. The standard rate for them is objectively not enough to pay for the increased electricity costs.

But they get paid for the electricity.

No, they get paid for the heating costs, but not for the household electricity. At the moment the rate for a single is currently 39 euros. But we know from comparison portals that the consumption of a single is well over 70 euros at current prices. This needs to be improved urgently. The standard rate must not only be raised to 502 euros. According to our calculations, it should be 725 euros.

What about the households that don’t get Hartz IV?

They also have to support the gas prices. And then they often live in poorly insulated apartments and don’t have the power to introduce cost-cutting measures or buy energy-saving refrigerators or washing machines. There could have been much better support.

But how?

A big step is the housing allowance and that’s where the federal government has already started. With Wohngeld Plus, she intends to raise the small number of housing benefit recipients from 617,000 to 2 million. But that can only be a first step. Because there are still 2 million living below the poverty line and getting nothing. It is now important that the housing benefit reform is implemented quickly. There is a new passage that housing benefit offices may issue monthly flat rates without in-depth examination if they are overburdened. We are appealing to the local authorities to hand over the money really quickly. So people can get it before next fall too. That makes much more sense than distributing the money with the watering can, as is the case with the gas and electricity price brake.

How far would you go into the middle class with funding?

If we were to serve everyone who is below the poverty line, we would have reached 13.8 million people in over seven million households. As far as direct payments are concerned, I would have gone significantly higher. The Ministry of Labor once proposed a relief up to the average gross income for full-time employees. That’s a little over 4000 euros. We joined that. There is no longer any need for support. Of course, the one-off payments would have to be based on how long the prices remain so high.

Doesn’t this always create new injustices? So that in the end someone has more than someone who didn’t get any help?

There will always be injustices in individual cases. If I have to find rules in a highly complex society with 80 million people, I will always have cases that are treated unfairly. But it is better to create regulations where there are injustices in individual cases than, as is the case now, ones that have a systematic and structural social imbalance.

Volker Petersen spoke to Ulrich Schneider