“So short time, so much pressure”
Experts despair of gas price brake
10/08/2022, 7:44 p.m
On Monday, the commission of experts on the gas price brake is to present its proposal for the billion-euro project to the chancellor. The committee will probably only partially fulfill this task. While companies and unions are urging them to hurry, the head of the commission complains about the time pressure.
The consultations of the experts on the gas price brake will probably take longer than expected. “The work of the commission will continue after Monday,” said economist Karen Pittel, who is a member of the body set up by the federal government, the editorial network Germany. The final deliberations of the commission are actually scheduled for Sunday. Trade unions and companies are calling for rapid clarity on the design of the measure.
The exam this weekend is primarily about what can be implemented in the short term, said Pittel. She assumes that this “longer and personal exchange” will be very helpful. The first recommendations will then be presented on Monday. In order to develop “more targeted” and “more complex solutions for the coming year”, further exchange will probably be needed.
The gas price brake is an essential part of the €200 billion “defense shield” announced last week by the traffic light government in the energy crisis. Here, a “basic consumption” of gas is to be subsidized by the state. The details are still open. In the Gas Commission, the experts discuss various models.
“No planning security at all”
The federal government must now “clarify as quickly as possible how companies will be relieved by the gas price cap,” demanded IG Metall boss Jörg Hofmann. Up to 15 percent of metalworking industrial companies are threatened in their existence by sharply rising energy costs, Hofmann told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. The ongoing uncertainty threatens to seriously damage Germany as an industrial location.
“We have no planning security at all,” criticized the head of the NRW brewery association, Michael Hollmann, in the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. “The gas commission has been working for weeks and nothing is happening, at least to the outside world.” The federal government has announced 200 billion euros, “but no one knows what for”.
Chancellor expects submission on Monday
The chair of the expert commission, Veronika Grimm, however, criticized the time pressure to which the committee was exposed. “The decision to convene such a body could have been made a few months ago, after all, the development of gas prices was foreseeable.” Therefore, she finds it “very unfortunate that we now have to find a model for a gas price brake in such a short time under so much pressure that can actually be implemented”.
Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa, President of Caritas and also a member of the Expert Commission, announced that she wanted to work towards a solution based on solidarity. “People who live in facilities for elderly care, integration assistance or child and youth welfare” should not be forgotten either, she told the Berlin “Tageszeitung”. So far, however, it is still unclear to what extent the subsidized gas prices also apply to these people and to what extent larger providers of social institutions also benefit from relief.
Deputy government spokesman Wolfgang Büchner had said that as soon as the commission’s proposals were available, the federal government would “immediately deal with them intensively and continue the consultations”. The Chancellor “calculates with the template for Monday”.