Relief in January including oil?
SPD thinks out loud - FDP wants to set "incentives" for the poorest
Created: 10/23/2022, 8:02 p.m
By: Andreas Schmid
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil next to Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The Social Democrats are thinking about new relief.
© IMAGO / Mike Schmidt
Are the federal government's relief measures falling short?
The SPD wants to make improvements, while the FDP wants to encourage savings.
Even with citizens' allowance recipients.
Berlin – energy crisis, record inflation, fear of supply.
"We will get through this winter well," said Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the end of September.
Since then, the federal government has presented the gas price brake to provide financial relief for people in Germany.
The December advance payment will be taken over, but the gas price brake will not take effect until March.
Too late?
Scholz' SPD now wants to improve.
Relief: SPD wants to think about "bridging" plans - also for oil
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil said at the weekend that the Social Democrats were examining ways to "give even more support" to companies and citizens in January and February.
The commission of experts set up by the federal government has shown “a feasible way”, said Klingbeil on Deutschlandfunk.
The question now is whether that is “politically the right thing to do” or whether there must be something “to bridge the gap” between December and March.
"These are all questions that we as the SPD are now dealing with in Parliament."
The SPD leadership did not comment more specifically.
There are also demands for additional help from the parliamentary group.
"We also need solutions for January and February as well as hardship solutions for other energy sources such as oil," said SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch of the
picture on Sunday
.
He relies on changes to the draft law in the Bundestag.
“From March we will pull the price brake.
But for those who already have hardly any money left at the end of the month, March is still too far away.”
Gas price criticism at the MPK: SPD Prime Minister Weil presents an alternative
The prime ministers of the federal states also see it that way, more than half of whom belong to the traffic light parties SPD and Greens.
At the prime ministers' conference, they called for the gas price brake to be introduced as early as January.
"We can only advise the federal government against adopting the procedure proposed by the experts for the gas price brake," said Lower Saxony's recently re-elected SPD Prime Minister Stephan Weil.
SPD (8) | Berlin, Brandenburg, Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland |
union (6) | Bavaria, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein |
Green (1) | Baden-Wuerttemberg |
Left (1) | Thuringia |
It would be difficult to convey to citizens that the gas price brake will only take effect in March, i.e. after the cold winter months.
Especially since there are alternatives: for example, energy suppliers could reduce their deductions with a view to reducing VAT and gas price allocation.
There was a corresponding suggestion from Torgelow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
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Heating costs: FDP wants to set “incentives” for the poorest
The FDP is also dealing with relief.
The liberals are criticizing the plans for citizen money – the Hartz IV successor pushed by SPD Labor Minister Hubertus Heil, which is expected to be received by 5.4 million people.
The draft law states that heating costs will be covered indefinitely for the first two years.
The FDP rejects this.
You have to "make it clear that the heating costs have to be reasonable," said party deputy Johannes Vogel of the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
.
"It must be ruled out that someone heats during the energy crisis without paying attention to saving." The poorest in society should therefore also be encouraged to save.
The heating costs will also be higher than they used to be for those receiving citizen benefits, and the job center has to take care of this,” said Vogel.
"But they still have to be appropriate."
Most recently, the federal government made a comparatively unified statement on citizen income, poison arrows flew above all from opposition leader Friedrich Merz (CDU).
The new FDP criticism of the SPD plan could cause the next traffic light dispute.
The SPD demands for new relief may also be the case.
(as/AFP)