By Andrea Thomas
MESEBERG/BERLIN (Dow Jones) — Before the start of his cabinet’s closed session, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) highlighted Germany’s progress in securing the energy supply and promised citizens and companies new relief soon.
The government will be very carefully discussed this week about a “relief package that is as tailor-made as possible, as efficient as possible, as targeted as possible for citizens and for our companies,” said Scholz in Meseberg. Citizens must be put in a position to deal with the increased prices so that no one is left alone with their problems.
“That is the common goal of the federal government. We will work on it. We will continue to push this forward in the course of this week, so that we are able to present the necessary solutions and decisions very quickly,” said Scholz at the beginning of the two-day closed conference Meseberg Castle.
The meeting will focus on energy supply and the planned national security strategy in view of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The focus should also be on the controversial gas levy proposed by Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens).
Scholz emphasized that the measures taken to procure replacement gas supplies, to expand the infrastructure and to produce alternative electricity have contributed to the fact that Germany is “in a much better position now” with regard to its energy supply security than was foreseeable a few months ago. As a result, “we can deal quite well with the threats we face from Russia, which uses gas, for example, as part of its own strategy in the war against Ukraine,” said Scholz. “We’ve prepared. That’s the good news.”
Other topics of the meeting are vocational training and the digital strategy.
The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the CEO of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), Marie-Luise Wolff, Federal Network Agency President Klaus Müller and Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), are invited as guests.
The chairwoman of the Federal Employment Agency (BA), Andrea Nahles, and the chairwoman of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), Yasmin Fahimi, have been invited to talk about vocational training.
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DJG/aat/sha
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 30, 2022 04:37 ET (08:37 GMT)