Berlin, Brussels First the Federal Minister of Economics defended it, now Robert Habeck has made it clear: If he has his way, the gas levy will not remain in its current form. Habeck said on Friday that he wanted to make it more difficult for profitable companies to access the levy. His ministry is checking whether there are legally secure ways to sort out “free riders”.
But Habeck and his officials will not be able to decide that alone. An adjustment of the surcharge would depend in particular on the EU Commission. Talks between Berlin and Brussels are already underway and the Commission is prepared to at least examine exceptions to the subsidy rules in this emergency of the energy crisis. But how promising is that?
The gas surcharge has become a political issue. From October 1, gas consumers will have to pay an additional 2.4 cents for each kilowatt hour. This is intended to support the ailing importers, who can pass on 90 percent of the additional costs they incur as a result of the failure of gas deliveries from Russia via the surcharge. On Friday afternoon, the European gas price rose by nine percent to a record high.
The gas levy is considered to be a central lifeline, especially for the troubled energy supplier Uniper. Last week, the Handelsblatt revealed that not only importers threatened with insolvency received money from the levy.
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The eleven recipients also include companies that are currently doing profitable business. In the next two and a half years, consumers would still have to give these companies around three billion euros, according to information from the Handelsblatt. Habeck now wants to try to sort out these companies.
According to statements by traffic light politicians such as Michael Kruse, spokesman for energy policy for the FDP parliamentary group, this is entirely possible. “The group of recipients should be restricted in such a way that only companies that have gotten into economic difficulties and where this has also been determined can claim compensation payments,” he said. This regulation would reduce the gas surcharge.
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Kruse’s counterpart from the Greens parliamentary group, Ingrid Nestle, expressed a similar view: “I think it makes sense not to pay gas suppliers who make good profits any help from the gas levy fund.”
Limiting the number of recipients was already planned
The Federal Ministry of Economics had already dealt with this procedure when designing the levy. The first drafts of the law stated that the levy would only be paid to importers who were threatened with insolvency. “When the relevant law was amended at the beginning of July, this procedure was the agreement between the traffic light partners,” explained FDP politician Kruse.
The reason that the officials in the Federal Ministry of Economics had apparently changed their mind: legal difficulties. In particular, EU state aid law generally prohibits giving preference to individual companies when it comes to state measures. A “Lex Uniper” is therefore not possible with the gas levy, government circles said in the past few days.
However, state aid law allows exceptions under strict conditions. But Brussels would have to approve it. However, it is not clear whether the legal framework would allow this in the case of the surcharge. That’s exactly what Habeck’s officials should now check again. However, it is questionable whether an exception would be politically enforceable at all.
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EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is particularly responsible. The liberal is said to have already critically eyed the corona aid programs in Germany, which are far-reaching in a European comparison. At first it was considered unlikely that she would allow the Federal Republic of Germany even larger dimensions of state aid during the energy crisis.
The worsening of the situation could cause them to move away from their position, it is now said. In fact, the EU Commission announced on Friday that it was “in close contact with the federal government and ready to examine the admissibility of emergency measures” on the question of the levy. However, a spokeswoman did not want to give an assessment of whether limiting the gas surcharge to companies threatened with insolvency was permissible.
Can only save Uniper with tax money?
The SPD parliamentary group comes up with another solution anyway. Energy policy spokeswoman Nina Scheer believes that energy importers should be rescued “priority via direct government aid”. In addition to the levy, the federal government created a paragraph for this a few weeks ago. In the case of direct aid, it is already possible to save individual companies in a targeted manner.
This is already being done at Uniper, the company receives direct state aid – in addition to the majority of the levy funds. Specifically, the state takes a stake in the company and provides additional capital from tax revenue. Scheer intends to save Uniper completely in this way.
Then the gas levy could probably be omitted. This is exactly what the presidency of the SME and Economic Union (MIT) calls for in a decision on Friday, which is available to the Handelsblatt. “The additional costs of gas importers from all 37 countries are passed on almost unchecked to citizens and companies,” it says.
The entire Union followed this direction on Friday with a motion for the first week of the Bundestag session from September 6th. The gas surcharge should be lifted “with immediate effect”, the dpa quotes from the application of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.
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However, it is not clear what a complete rescue of Uniper using tax money would mean for the federal budget. A significant part of the contracts between Uniper and its customers will run until early 2024.
According to reports, the company will receive around 23 billion euros from the allocation during this time. If this money were missing in the budget, spending would have to be restricted elsewhere. “I think complete financing from taxes instead of a levy is unsocial,” says Green politician Nestle.
Dangerous price increases can be observed on the markets, which would far exceed the amount of the levy. “And precisely because the problem is so big, we have to use the finite tax funds where the need is greatest,” says Nestle. In her view, if Uniper were rescued entirely from tax funds, there would no longer be any way of specifically relieving those on low incomes who would be hit hardest by the high energy costs.
Black Peter game in the federal government
The gas levy is now leading to blame within the coalition as to who is responsible for it. Everyone points to everyone: Greens to the FDP, FDP to the Greens, SPD leader Saskia Esken to Robert Habeck.
Esken criticized the Economics Minister unusually sharply and threatened to stop the levy in the Bundestag. “In the end, Parliament also has the right to intervene,” Esken warned on the “Welt” television channel. “And Parliament will also make use of this.” In order to prevent the surcharge from failing, Habeck urgently needs to ensure that no one who profits from the energy crisis earns money from the gas surcharge.
Habeck also had to take criticism from his own party. Green politician Anton Hofreiter says that the measure “clearly made a mistake”. Habeck admitted to having underestimated the complexity of the gas market. “What we honestly didn’t know was how interdependent the gas market is,” he said.
However, his Green Party is also trying to blame Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for the bickering about the gas levy. Because he refused to save gas companies like Uniper directly with funds from the federal budget, the surcharge had to be used first.
The Federal Ministry of Finance is vehemently opposed to this. This accusation is “outrageous,” it says there. The idea of a gas levy came from the Federal Ministry of Economics and was conceived there. This could also be “clearly documented” by means of documents.
A rescue of Uniper from federal funds would have led to a massive devaluation of Uniper’s ratings, which would have caused difficulties for the company’s equity capitalization. This is why this path was not possible at all – everyone knew that.
The reduction in VAT on all gas consumption did not come from the Federal Ministry of Finance, as the Greens claimed, but from the house of their own minister. The Federal Ministry of Finance had also followed a different approach here, which the Ministry of Economics had rejected because of concerns about state aid.
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