By Michael Sauerbier
Electricity, gas and raw material prices are exploding, a huge wave of bankruptcies is imminent! Brandenburg promises bakers and mayors support.
But the state government is hesitating with its aid package. Because the federal government should pay for it.
Monday energy summit, Tuesday special cabinet meeting, Wednesday energy debate in Parliament. The horror prices and their consequences also determine Brandenburg’s politics. The state government has long since put together an aid package – “at least in the three-digit million range,” said Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke (60, SPD).
► Who should the cash injection help? All those who get nothing from the federal government’s 65 billion package. It supports retirees, students, housing benefit recipients and a few large companies. But not the baker or the mayor who can’t pay the gas bill for the oven or the municipal pool. This is where the country has to step in.
► Brandenburg has to pump the money for this. But the debt brake prohibits that. “That’s only possible if we declare the budgetary emergency,” says Woidke.
Schleswig-Holstein has already done that. A serious mistake, says Woidke. He wants to wait until the federal government declares an emergency. And paid for the aid package yourself: with the excess profit tax for electricity companies!
Reason: The price of electricity is rising because it depends on expensive gas. Anyone who generates electricity cheaply from coal, wind or the sun is now earning a fortune. A tax on these “random profits” is intended to relieve the burden on electricity consumers.
Brandenburg’s bakers and mayors can only hope that Finance Minister Christian Lindner will give in quickly. He has to – otherwise his FDP will lose the middle class.
Brandenburg does not get federal aid for free either. Finance Minister Katrin Lange (SPD): “We are there with one billion euros and will negotiate hard again.”