FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) – “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” on the gas levy:
“… The whole construct is knitted with a hot needle. That’s how the Federal Ministers… Robert Habeck (Greens) and Christian Lindner (FDP) designed the surcharge as part of the normal tariff so that it doesn’t have to be time-consuming to an EU having to undergo state aid proceedings…. Originally, only the importers of Russian gas might have passed on the costs. But that would have meant that other gas customers would have been fine, an unfair procedure from the point of view of politics. But that’s exactly what will happen once more now, because suppliers like RWE or Shell want to pay the levy without charging their customers…. If you want to undermine the price signal that reflects the shortage, then the replacement purchase should be subsidized from the budget to a limited extent a crazy idea.”/be/DP/jha
