A good six months after the announcement, more than three million students and technical students should be able to apply for the long-awaited energy price flat rate of 200 euros from this Wednesday. This should be possible on the “Einmalpayment200.de” application platform set up especially for this purpose by the federal and state governments. The money is intended to relieve the sharp rise in energy prices.
The application platform had been tested in a pilot project with several universities in the past few weeks – according to Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger, it was successful. More than 12,000 applicants already have the 200 euros in their account, the FDP politician told the “Bild am Sonntag” and added: “The application for all students and technical students will start on Wednesday.” According to the Saxony-Anhalt Digital Ministry, which was in charge of setting up the platform, the application took an average of three minutes in the test phase.
3.5 million can apply
Around 3.5 million students and technical students who were enrolled at a university or in a technical college as of December 1, 2022 are entitled to the money. A domicile or “habitual abode” in Germany is required. At technical schools, for example, educators, technicians or business economists are trained. The energy price flat rate should neither be taxed nor offset against any social benefits.
The traffic light coalition had already agreed on the special payment at the beginning of September last year. At the time, there was talk of a quick and unbureaucratic payment. Implementing this, however, proved difficult. A quick transfer of the 200 euros was thwarted, among other things, because the account details of all the students and technical students concerned were not available centrally.
Long debate about application platform
The federal and state governments also repeatedly got into arguments when trying to build an application platform on which those affected can identify themselves securely and unambiguously and on which personal and account data that are available at educational institutions are brought together at the same time. It was about data protection, responsibilities and technical details. Student representatives and the opposition in the Bundestag had criticized the slow process.
Recently there has also been criticism that all those affected have to create a user account with the federal government, a so-called BundID account, in order to clearly identify themselves when applying. It has now been clarified that the online function of the identity card or an “Elster certificate”, as used for online tax returns, is not absolutely necessary, but that a simple BundID account with a username and password can also be created .
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior on Monday, a good 700,000 people had acquired such an ID by the beginning of the week. However, it is unclear how many of these are students or technical students who have only registered because of the energy price flat rate. Every citizen can use the account for other administrative services.
