Dusseldorf The federal government is responding to the current gas crisis with a comprehensive package of laws. The focus is on changes to the Energy Security Act (EnSiG), which are to be pushed through the Bundestag and Bundesrat this week.
In future, under certain circumstances, gas importers should be able to pass on the massively increased purchase prices to customers more quickly. However, it is unclear whether the so-called price adjustment clause or a cost allocation mechanism will be used. The amended Energy Security Act provides both instruments.
With the price adjustment clause, certain gas customers would be particularly heavily burdened, for example if their supplier bought most of his gas from Russia. The allocation mechanism provides for an equal burden on all gas customers – for example in the form of a network fee.
However, the Düsseldorf competition economist Jens Südekum warns politicians against implementing the pay-as-you-go mechanism too half-heartedly and not fully incorporating the actual price increases. “It won’t work without price incentives for consumers,” says Südekum in the new episode of Handelsblatt Today.
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The economist fears that the incentives for consumers to save gas will be too low if the pay-as-you-go mechanism develops into a “gas price cap through the back door”. And if not enough gas is saved by winter, the risk of a shortage and rationing of gas for the industry increases. “That would plunge us into a deep recession,” warns Südekum.
He believes there is no alternative to the government’s rescue of Uniper: “We will not be able to do without Uniper’s bailout. If we do not want the gas market to collapse, Uniper must be stabilized quickly.”
New charges in the cum-ex scandal
Also: Cum-Ex is one of the biggest scandals in German economic history – and since Tuesday it has been enriched by another episode: the Cologne public prosecutor’s office has accused the long-time head of Hamburg bank MM-Warburg, Christian Olearius, of tax evasion of several hundred million euros . Handelsblatt investigative boss Sönke Iwersen has the details ready.
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