by Holger Hansen
BERLIN, Sept 29 (Reuters) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday presented a 200 billion euro “shield” meant to protect businesses and households from the impact of soaring energy prices.
“Prices must fall. The government will therefore do everything possible. To this end, we are setting up a vast defensive shield,” said the head of government.
Almost at the same time, Destatis, the national statistics institute, announced that inflation in Germany had reached 10.9% year on year in September according to its first estimate, the highest figure since the start of the series. statistics in 1996.
The government plan, which will be financed by new loans, provides, among other things, for an “emergency brake” mechanism for gas and electricity tariffs and the abandonment of the gas tax project which initially makes it possible to limit future increases.
In addition, the nuclear reactors in the south of the country which were to close before the end of this year will remain in operation until the spring.
Berlin suspended its “debt brake” this year, which caps new borrowing at 0.35% of gross domestic product (GDP), but Finance Minister Christian Lindner recently said he wanted to respect this constraint again as soon as next year.
Thursday, Christian Lindner assured that the stable situation of public finances made it possible to resort to borrowing to finance the new plan.
“To put it another way: we are currently engaged in an energy war,” he said. “We want to clearly separate crisis-related spending from the management of the ordinary budget, we want to send a very clear signal to the capital markets.”
The eventually scrapped gas bill tax, which was due to come into effect on Saturday, October 1, and run until April 2024, was intended to help companies cover the cost of replacing gas imported from Russia.
But its interest was questioned after the government’s decision to nationalize Uniper, Germany’s biggest importer of Russian gas. (Report Holger Hansen, Kirsti Knolle, Thomas Escritt and Matthias Wiliams, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Kate Entringer)