The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Economy Veronika Grimm: Warning against excessive expectations of gas price brakes

2022-10-07T10:09:07.822Z


The chairwoman of the Grimm gas price commission advised against overly high hopes for the planned price brake. The gas price will also be significantly higher after the step than before the Ukraine war.


Enlarge image

Veronika Grimm: »It will be important to maintain a high savings incentive«

Photo: Jürgen Heinrich / imago images/Jürgen Heinrich

The chairwoman of the gas price commission, Veronika Grimm, has warned against too high expectations of the planned gas price brake.

"We will permanently end our dependence on Russia," said the economics professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg to the newspapers of the Funke media group.

"Due to the higher liquid gas procurement prices, the gas price will remain significantly higher than before the Russian attack on Ukraine, despite a gas price brake." The commission could not pretend that nothing had happened.

According to Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner, households in Germany will have to wait a few more days for the concept of the planned gas price brake.

"We'll have clarity next week, at the latest the week after next," the FDP politician told radio station 105.5 Spreeradio.

"It's not an easy undertaking." To do it well, a little preparatory time with the commission of experts and practitioners is needed.

The traffic light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP recently announced a "defensive umbrella" to support consumers and companies because of the rising energy prices.

A gas price brake is intended to cap the prices for at least part of consumption in such a way that private households and companies are not overwhelmed.

A commission of experts set up by the federal government is to present recommendations for the design of the price brake.

At a retreat this weekend, the commission wants to develop a “resilient proposal” and hand it over to politicians.

The co-chairman of the SPD, Lars Klingbeil, said on Thursday that the commission would present "a clever model" on Monday.

Grimm advertises one-time payment

The economist Grimm campaigned for a gas price brake in the form of a one-off payment.

»It will be important to maintain a high savings incentive.

If it were a one-time payment, that would clearly be the case,” she said.

“You would have a much smaller incentive to save if you reduced the price of gas by a certain percentage.” If you gave people a one-time payment, they would still get a lot out of using less gas.

However, the chairperson of the commission complained about the time pressure to which the committee was exposed.

"The decision to convene such a committee could have been made a few months ago, after all, the development of gas prices was foreseeable," said Grimm.

However, in view of the sharp rise in consumer prices, Lindner said: "We will lose prosperity as a society." The reason is the higher costs for energy imports.

"It won't be as cheap as it was last year or the year before."

aeh/dpa

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-10-07

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.