Bad news for diesel drivers: Greens boss Habeck wants to put an end to tax aid

It could soon be uncomfortable for diesel drivers.

The calls for an abolition of the diesel privilege are getting louder and louder.

Berlin - A good one and a half pages were devoted to climate protection in the exploratory paper of the SPD *, Greens * and FDP *.

Among other things, it contains plans to expand renewable energies, which, however, are likely to cost a lot.

How exactly these plans are financed, however, is not clear from the paper.

But the Federal Environment Agency and the parties have already considered a possible source of income.

According to their ideas, the so-called diesel privilege should go to the collar.

Diesel subsidization: Robert Habeck is in favor of abolition

Anyone who currently drives a diesel * will get away with refueling more cheaply than drivers of gasoline vehicles.

This is because the energy tax, formerly mineral oil tax, is lower in Germany for diesel than for gasoline.

While this amounts to 47.04 cents per liter for diesel, it is 65.45 cents per liter for petrol.

That makes a price difference of over 18 cents per liter.

But that should change in the future when it comes to the traffic light parties.

"We want to gain additional budgetary leeway by checking the budget for superfluous, ineffective and environmentally and climate-damaging subsidies and expenditures," says the exploratory paper.

And Robert Habeck from the Greens also confirmed this plan in Markus Lanz's * talk.

There he makes it clear that it makes no sense to “encourage climate-damaging behavior with taxpayers' money”.

Environmental protection: This is how much environmentally harmful subsidies cost

The Federal Environment Agency * (UBA) also considers the abolition of environmentally harmful subsidies, including the diesel advantage, to be sensible. In a press release on Thursday (October 28), the UBA stated that the environmentally harmful subsidies in 2018 amounted to around 65 billion euros. With this amount, however, there is still a lack of help from local authorities and federal states. If this were included in the calculation, the amount would be even higher.

“It is paradoxical when the state promotes climate protection with many billions and at the same time subsidizes climate-damaging modes of production and behavior. As is well known, we are running out of time when it comes to climate protection. It is therefore important to move forward quickly with the dismantling of environmentally harmful subsidies, ”explains UBA President Dirk Messner in the communication. He also criticizes "the nonsensical coexistence of diesel privilege for combustion engines and purchase premiums for electric cars."

However, Messner also emphasizes that it is not possible to abolish all subsidies immediately.

The kerosene tax exemption for flights, for example, would have to be addressed at EU level.

Abolishing diesel subsidies, on the other hand, would be much easier to implement.

Here the traffic light coalition would have the opportunity to quickly implement its plans from the exploratory paper *.