All Germany’s anxieties about gas and more
Germany: Uniper case, gas surcharge and advice from economists for a new aid package for citizens. Pierluigi Mennitti's point from Berlin
German economists are suggesting that the government urgently launch an aid package, especially for people with low and medium incomes. In light of the sharp rise in energy prices, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research (Diw), Marcel Fratzscher, said that "the best tool is the payment of direct transfers, such as an energy allowance of 100 euros to person and per month for the next 18 months ".
Sebastian Dullien, scientific director of the Hans Böckler Foundation's Macroeconomic and Business Cycle Research Institute, close to the trade unions, said that a new version of the energy allowance, which is paid to all employees in September, would be conceivable and sensible. This should also take into account households that have so far remained largely empty-handed, such as those of pensioners with low incomes but without housing benefits.
Starting in October, a state gas surcharge of 2.419 cents per kilowatt hour will apply, resulting in a significant price increase. The tax is intended to favor suppliers who have to buy gas at high prices to replace the cheaper one from Russia. Furthermore, the higher procurement costs will still be gradually passed on to customers.
“A necessary measure and the most equitable of those possible”, the Minister of Economy Robert Habeck (Verdi) justified, announcing it at the beginning of the week. An initial response came from the accounts of Uniper, Germany's largest gas importer. Yesterday the company announced a loss of over 12 billion euros in the first half of the year. As explained by executives in Düsseldorf, € 6.5 billion is linked to the planned interruption of gas supplies from Russia.
Furthermore, the sum already included 2.7 billion euros of write-downs, inter alia for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The mechanism that led to these numbers in red, not at all unexpected, is the following: due to the reduction in supplies and the strong dependence on gas from Russia, the company is forced to buy more expensive gas on the market to comply with the contracts. This has led to liquidity problems as Uniper has so far been unable to pass on the price increases.
To buffer the situation, the state first developed a € 15 billion aid package and is taking a 30% stake in the company. But as this commitment alone cannot cover the daily losses in the long term, the introduction of the surcharge has been decided: starting in the autumn, end customers will have to pay an additional levy of 2,419 cents per kilowatt hour.
The project provided for the exemption of the gas tax from VAT. However, the European Union has rejected a request to that effect made by the liberal Finance Minister Christian Lindner. After the rejection, the government is considering the possibility of reducing the surcharge. "The minimum measure of 5% should be used," said Dieter Janecek, the Green Party's economic expert in an interview with Handelsblatt.
Similar positions were expressed by representatives of the SPD, the Chancellor's party. “Now the tax has to drop to at least 5%. We must do everything to keep the levy as low as possible, ”said Social Democrat economic expert Falko Mohrs. In the meantime, from the opposition, the vice-president of the CDU / Csu parliamentary group Jens Spahn always spoke on Handelsblatt: "The EU directive on energy taxation explicitly provides for exemptions that would allow the lowering of the energy surcharge on gas".
For his part, in the press conference on 11 August that marked the resumption of political and parliamentary activity in Germany after the summer break, Chancellor Olaf Scholz assured the Germans that "no one will be left alone" in the face of an energy crisis. which in the coming months will be reflected in the portfolios of citizens. Scholz has announced a reform that foresees a strong expansion of the housing allowance starting from the beginning of next year. The chancellor then assured that the government will also find resources for those who, despite having an income from work, do not have savings and therefore cannot easily cope with the increase in energy costs. "This is true for many citizens", he said verbatim answering a question from journalists, "I am concerned about those who earn 2800, 3200 or 4000 euros gross a month, for whom these are all important challenges". This is an overall package that aims to build a network not only around low income earners, but also average ones.
According to Fratzscher (the director of Diw), the segment of the population considered by the Chancellor includes more than one in five people in Germany: "These are mainly people who work in the low-wage sector, which is unusually large in Germany, and also many pensioners ". This group has almost no savings to cover the additional costs and receives almost no direct support from the state. And therefore it would not be able to cope with the costs of rising inflation with its own resources and would urgently need the support of the state. It is the weakest segment of the middle class. “We already have a strong social imbalance even within this social segment”, concluded the economist, “and this can be seen, for example, in the increase in the number of over-indebted people”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/germania-sovratassa-gas/ on Thu, 18 Aug 2022 05:45:06 +0000.