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Prinzipalmarkt in Münster: Now the retail sector is also threatened with closure
Photo: Rüdiger Wölk / imago images
Saxony is rushing ahead, Bavaria wants to follow suit: before Christmas, some federal states are threatened with forced closings for retail stores as part of an intensified shutdown.
It is quite possible that the shop will close nationwide after Christmas at the latest if the Chancellor and Prime Minister agree on it in the next few days.
The tightening hits the industry in the middle of the Christmas business, the top-selling weeks of the year.
The question is: will department stores, boutiques and bookstores be compensated, as they are already doing now, if they can no longer sell because they have to close or because their customers are no longer allowed to leave the house?
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The federal government is determined not to let retailers sit on their losses either.
The coordination talks between the houses of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) have been in full swing for days.
Even if the final details are not to be decided until the weekend, the contours of a solution are emerging.
Unlike the catering industry, however, the retail sector should not benefit from November and December aid, even if the shops have to close this year or cannot sell anything.
Instead, a measure is to come into play that will only take effect from the beginning of next year, the so-called bridging aid III.
This support from the federal government for companies also provides for a retroactive measure for the retail sector.
Sales outlets affected by the crisis, whose sales in November or December are more than 40 percent below the same month last year, may apply for state aid.
It is entirely possible to apply for support for individual weeks, according to the federal government.
Another advantage of the regulation: Affected companies can apply for aid, regardless of whether they are merely affected by a local, state-wide or nationwide shutdown.
The amount of the payment is no longer based on sales as with winter aid.
Instead, the companies concerned receive a subsidy towards their material costs, such as storage and rent.
How high the reimbursements will be and how expensive they will be for the federal government has not yet been determined.
While Ministers Scholz and Altmaier still have to think about how the consequences of the tough shutdown will be cushioned economically from Christmas onwards, they still have an old problem to solve.
Because the generous sales reimbursements within the framework of the November and December aid have still not been approved by the EU Commission, at least those above a threshold of four million euros.
This applies to larger hotels or concert organizers.
The Commission actually rejects the reimbursement of sales.
She prefers that the companies affected by Corona have their fixed costs reimbursed.
In any case, Commissioner Margrethe Vestager is concerned that financially strong Germany will emerge from the financial crisis much stronger than other EU countries.
The Dane has therefore only waved through the smaller November aid and is now letting the Germans fidget.
According to SPIEGEL information from the EU Commissioner, Altmaier and Scholz therefore wrote a joint letter in the first week of December asking Vestager to drop the upper limits and also to approve larger aid payments.
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