The federal government is apparently planning to cap the price of electricity. This emerges from a draft decision that is available to “Spiegel”. Accordingly, the electricity price for private households should be 40 cents per kilowatt hour at the beginning of next year. This should apply to a basic quota of 80 percent of annual consumption. The Prime Ministers want to discuss this at a conference on Wednesday.
In addition, the federal government is planning to introduce the gas price brake on March 1st. If possible, it should take effect a month earlier. “Retroactivity to February 1, 2023 is sought,” quotes the “Spiegel” from the draft resolution. Industrial companies should also benefit from the energy price cap. Electricity prices are to be capped at 13 cents per kilowatt hour. This applies to 70 percent of annual consumption.
The federal and state governments have been arguing for weeks about the distribution of costs for the €65 billion third relief package from the traffic light coalition at the beginning of September. Country representatives criticized that they were not included in advance and are now supposed to bear around 19 billion euros of the costs, in particular because of planned tax relief.
Weeks ago, the federal government announced that it would implement proposals from an expert commission for a gas price brake from March. At the same time, Chancellor Scholz is being confronted with demands for an electricity price brake to be introduced from January and for relief to be provided for the costs of other fuels such as heating oil and pellets – for the latter, however, the Chancellery is only aiming for a hardship regulation.
The federal and state governments agree that there should be a follow-up regulation for the nationwide nine-euro ticket for local public transport from the summer. Both sides basically support plans for a 49-euro ticket from next year, but argue about the financing. The federal government has offered 1.5 billion euros per year for this purpose.
At the end of September, the state finance ministers had also called for an increase in funds for regional rail expansion by a further 1.5 billion euros. In addition, they demanded increases of 1.65 billion euros for 2022 and 2023 to compensate for the massive increase in energy prices. According to reports, the Chancellery only wants to offer the federal states an additional one billion euros on Wednesday.
The federal states also refer to “the extraordinarily increasing energy and material costs in hospitals, university clinics and care facilities”. Last week, the Federal Council called for counter-financing from federal funds “immediately”.
People who do not receive social benefits but have little money to live on can apply for housing benefit. So far, the federal and state governments have shared the costs for the around 600,000 households who were last eligible. In 2021 they were 1.4 billion euros.
The federal government wants to more than triple the number of recipients to two million households by January 1st. Since the average payments are also increasing, the costs increase to around 5.1 billion euros, according to the Ministry of Construction. From the point of view of the federal government, the federal states should continue to bear half.