A total of one billion euros is earmarked for hardship aid for small and medium-sized companies.
(Photo: imago images/avanti)
Berlin Contrary to what was originally planned, the hardship aid for companies should now also apply to companies with oil or pellet heating. This emerges from a draft resolution for the meeting of the Budget Committee of the Bundestag on Wednesday, which is available to the Handelsblatt. “The funds released by the budget committee for the hardship regulation for SMEs can also be used for energy sources that are not connected to the grid (e.g. heating oil, pellets),” it says.
The householders are thus revising their own decision from around two weeks ago. At that time, the committee released 375 million euros to relieve small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are particularly hard hit by high energy prices. The aid is intended for cases for which the general gas and electricity price brake is not sufficient.
However, the traffic light housekeepers agreed to ignore a decision previously made in the legislative process. This had also provided hardship support for SMEs that do not heat with gas or electricity, but with oil, wood, pellets or other energy sources that are not connected to the grid. However, the budget committee explicitly excluded these energy sources from the aid in a resolution. This had led to great resentment at the end of January, also in the ranks of the traffic lights. An internal e-mail from the Federal Ministry of Economics said the decision was “surprising”.
Now the householders are reversing their own decision, and the 375 million euros can be distributed as planned. In addition, the budget committee wants to release a further 50 million euros. A total of one billion euros have been deposited for SME hardship cases.
In the past few days, the opposition and the federal states had once again put pressure on the traffic light housekeepers in Berlin to withdraw the decision. The Union wanted to submit its own application to the Bundestag. It states that the federal government “broke its word with regard to aid for small and medium-sized companies that use oil and pellets”. In the application, the Union called on the traffic light coalition to “make the funds announced and agreed with the federal states for hardship aid for small and medium-sized companies available in full and also to include grid-bound energy sources such as pellets, oil and liquid gas in the scope”. .
The federal states had recently mobilized again. In a joint letter to the Budget Committee of the Bundestag on February 6, the leaders of the Schleswig-Holstein CDU and Greens write that the decision of the Bundestag Budget Committee not to subsidize companies with oil and pellet heating contradicts the decision of the Prime Ministers’ Conference and has led to one “great loss of confidence”. “We therefore appeal to you to reconsider the decision and to change the conditions for hardship support for SMEs in such a way that companies that use oil or other energy sources such as wood pellets are also eligible to apply,” the letter continues .
More: Countries protest against the end of aid for oil and pellet heating