BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) continues to avoid a clear positioning in the discussion about a state electricity price reduction and instead calls for a debate about the financing. It is easier to say who should be helped than to name the source of the money, Scholz said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk published on Saturday.
The chancellor named three possibilities for where the money could come from: the remaining electricity price payers will pay for the reduction in the electricity price for individual companies, the taxpayers will bear the costs, or new debt will be taken on. “And I think it’s quite obvious that there are still very different views in Parliament,” said Scholz.
Electricity prices have risen due to energy shortages after Russian gas supplies were cut after the attack on Ukraine. Scholz wants to lower prices primarily through the expansion of renewable energies. The Greens and the SPD parliamentary group are calling for a state-subsidized electricity price for a transitional phase for companies that are particularly affected by high energy costs. The FDP is against it, but sympathizes with a reduction in the electricity tax, which would then apply to everyone.
The First Parliamentary Secretary of the FDP, Johannes Vogel, reiterated his party’s position. “It is unfair if a few companies benefit from a low electricity price, but other businesses in the trades or medium-sized businesses and the citizens do not – and then have to finance it,” he said ntv (Saturday). If the price of electricity fell by two cents per kilowatt hour, that would be of great help to many energy-intensive companies. “If the coalition partners also say that the electricity price is too high, we must consider together how we can work out some leeway in the budget.”
Baden-Württemberg’s Finance Minister Danyal Bayaz (Greens) proposes setting up an expert commission. “Experts from industry, trade unions and science, for example, should develop proposals in the next few weeks and then present them to politicians for further consultation and implementation,” said Bayaz of the German Press Agency in Stuttgart. “Apparently, the federal government is not in a position to formulate a unified opinion on the industrial electricity price. This threatens to become a deadlock that creates additional uncertainty.”
That’s why he thinks an electricity commission similar to last year’s gas commission is a smart approach, said Bayaz. The gas commission set up by the federal government had drawn up proposals to relieve citizens and industry of high gas prices.
Chancellor Scholz was generally skeptical about demands for further major support for the economy on Deutschlandfunk. “An international magazine said that Germany would have to incur a lot of debt. And to be honest, those who are discussing this in Germany are not saying this sentence,” he said. “But the fact that we are now basically getting into a mode where 100 billion debts a year is somehow a completely normal thing, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
If the economy does not want the debt brake to be lifted, then it must also say “that it is good that we support the economy on a large scale”, but not with such hundred-billion programs./mfi/and/DP /hey