Helsinki/Dsseldorf (Reuters) – According to an insider, Finnish Europe Minister Tytti Tuppurainen is traveling to Berlin on Thursday to negotiate a possible rescue of Germany’s largest gas importer Uniper.
Meetings with the federal government and managers from Uniper and its Finnish majority shareholder Fortum are planned, a Finnish government representative told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday. The aim is to find a solution to Uniper’s financial problems. Representatives of the federal government and Unipers could not initially be reached for comment.
The two governments have so far had different ideas about how a rescue could look like. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck had made it clear that he also wanted to hold Fortum accountable. The Finns, on the other hand, emphasize that the solution lies in the hands of the federal government. According to Fortum’s plans, which hold around 80 percent of Uniper, the coal, gas and gas import business in Germany could fall to the state.
Uniper, on the other hand, has spoken out in favor of the state getting involved with the group. The Verdi union and the Uniper works council support this. You warned against breaking up the Düsseldorf company, which employs 11,500 people worldwide, around 5,000 of them in Germany. In German government circles it was said that Fortum wanted to transfer the loss-making German business and continue to run the rest of the group. You have to look at this very carefully.
Germany’s largest gas trader Uniper has to buy gas on the expensive spot market because of the supply cuts in Russia in order to meet its delivery obligations – and is thus incurring losses in customer business. “Under the current conditions, Uniper experiences daily outflows of funds in the mid double-digit million range,” complained Uniper CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach. “A situation that we cannot sustain for long.” The group has submitted an application to the federal government for stabilization measures. As a result of new legal regulations, state support measures up to and including equity participation are possible.
(Report by Essi Lehto, Tom Kckenhoff; edited by Olaf Brenner. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected] (for politics and economics) or [email protected] (for companies and markets) .)