SPD leader Saskia Esken proposes a speed limit and driving bans in view of the high fuel prices. Such measures would amount to a double punishment of citizens.
Speed limit and driving bans – sure, you can do it. Only the justification of the SPD chairwoman Saskia Esken is the worst imaginable that one can think of. After all, it boils down to letting the citizens suffer for the mess that politics has caused – with the participation of the Social Democrats. And punish them twice over.
On the one hand, for the fact that the traffic light coalition has issued an invitation to the oil companies to “foray against the state” with the tank discount. This is how Robert Habeck, the Federal Minister of Economics from the Greens, put it.
But the citizens would not only be the scapegoats of a questionable policy. On top of that, they would be held directly responsible for the nefariousness of the oil companies. Why, of all people, could the leader of the Social Democratic Party think of harassing the working population, such as craftsmen, in such a way?
If you think the tank discount was wrong, then you have to abolish it. The FDP chairman Christian Lindner is not of this opinion. He says that without the tank discount, the price increase for fuel would have been much higher. The vice chancellor refers – not wrongly – to the world market: Oil as a basis for car fuel would have become more expensive anyway.
As a reminder: the tank discount cannot be explained without the nine-euro ticket for the railways. The Liberals wanted to support driving, the Greens public transport. It was a classic coalition compromise, vulgo: horse-trading. Unfortunately, with such compromises, things that don’t belong together often come together.
What is forgotten is that, as always, citizens pay for their own relief. Politics is not a benefactor, it has no money of its own. It only redistributes the citizens’ money. An aspect that is all too easily forgotten in the public debate.
Just like another uncomfortable truth: the state can never be an insurance policy against life risks of all kinds. Social Democrats in particular have a hard time realizing this, for whom the state is such a social repair shop.
The fuel discount and the nine-euro ticket are basically mutually exclusive ideas. They have as much to do with each other as Christian Lindner and Robert Habeck. These traffic light allies have long since become rivals in the course of governing.
On one important point, however, they do not appear to be: on the reform of antitrust law. Lindner has not yet contradicted Habeck’s powerful announcement that he would create antitrust law with “tooth and claw”. Feat: antitrust law is a fundamentally liberal concern.
What is liberal is often misunderstood. Liberal does not mean that the state must remain weak so that the economy can regulate all relationships among itself undisturbed. Rather, liberal means that the state must be strong, even stronger than the economy, so that it can create a framework so that economic activity remains fair.
Antitrust law is the sharpest sword of the liberal state to protect smaller companies from large ones and the citizens from collusion by the big ones to their detriment. So if antitrust law, as it stands today, is not strong enough to prevent mineral oil companies from exploiting their dominant position on the market to the detriment of their (forced) customers, it must become stronger.
But one thing is clear: Habeck has big plans – to date, it has not been possible to prove that the oil companies colluded, because it is not that easy. So far there has been no concrete evidence, all allegations against the companies are based on circumstantial evidence.
Unmasking war profiteers, which is ultimately the goal, is a complex matter. Simply comparing balance sheets before the Ukraine war and after it began, as former Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier suggests, is all too simplistic.
If she tries to change Habeck’s antitrust law now, the first thing he could do is abolish himself. The so-called ministerial approval is an exception to antitrust law anchored in antitrust law. It allows economics ministers to allow company mergers for political reasons, bypassing antitrust law. Habeck should abolish the ministerial permit.
In any case, by the time such a law is passed, both the fuel discount and the nine-euro ticket will long be history. And rightly so: Both measures are not sustainable, but just a drop in the ocean.
Surf tip: SPD dual leadership – These are Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken
