Because the gas levy should also benefit corporations that are making profits, the Minister of Economics has had to take a lot of criticism. Now he wants to fix it. It remains to be seen whether this will help to limit the group of beneficiaries. Because many corporations can’t help but hold out their hands.
“We have a political problem.” Economics Minister Robert Habeck admits that the gas surcharge of 2.419 cents plus VAT has become the excitement of the summer – and now probably needs to be improved.
In principle, there is agreement that badly hit companies such as the energy group Uniper must be secured so that the gas supply for companies and consumers remains secure. The Düsseldorf-based group, which has so far supplied a quarter of the gas consumed in Germany, has gotten into trouble because it has so far mainly bought cheap supplies from Russia. Now Uniper has to buy the fuel from other countries at high cost. That tears a hole of around 60 million euros in the coffers of the group – per day.
Gas customers are to fill this hole kilowatt-hour by kilowatt-hour with an additional levy. However, not only the Düsseldorf group and the also ailing SEFE – the former Gazprom Germania – benefit from the hastily cobbled together gas levy. Around 75 percent of the levy goes to these two companies. A total of eleven companies hold out their hands. The SEFE subsidiary WIEH and the partner VNG, the guest subsidiary of Energie Baden-Württemberg (EnBW), should also collect. “The pay-as-you-go system does not enable VNG to make any profits, but reduces losses,” explains Leipzig.
Secure tariffs with a 24-month price guarantee now
However, EnBW boss Mastiaux recently stated that an imbalance at VNG is unlikely. And in contrast to Uniper, the parent company is a long way from bankruptcy. This is ensured by brilliant business with electricity. The Karlsruhe company recently informed its customers that the price of electricity will also increase by a third. Unlike its competitor RWE in Essen, EnBW does not want to do without the planned gas surcharge. “The situation is not comparable,” says CFO Thomas Kusterer. He puts the impact on earnings in the first half of the year due to higher gas procurement costs at around 550 million euros. In the first half of 2022, the Karlsruhe energy giant nevertheless posted a profit of almost 1.5 billion euros.
“For some of these companies, the gas surcharge is not vital and therefore not necessary,” says Andreas Schröder, head of energy analysis at the energy market researcher ICIS euros. The Swiss energy trader Axpo also earned half a billion Swiss francs in the first half of the year alone. The energy trader EWE, which only obtains 1.5 percent of its gas from Russia and therefore does not have to finance a significant conversion, also wants to collect. Energy traders such as Vitol also want to collect , Gunvor, DXT and ENET have filed applications, although some of them have benefited massively from rising prices, criticizes the Berlin law firm Raue, which is currently even examining a constitutional complaint.
It is made easy for companies to hold hands with the responsible Trading Hup Europe (THE). The ordinance introducing a gas levy (section 26 of the Energy Security Act) does not contain a link between the application and the risk of insolvency. “An impending bankruptcy is not one of them,” confirmed a spokeswoman for Habeck. “We are of the opinion that a company must also make a profit in order to position itself more broadly and ultimately become less dependent on Russian gas supplies.”
Are the companies “free riders” as Habeck is now claiming? Rather not. Many top managers even have to strive for such achievements in order not to make themselves liable to prosecution. For example, the Stock Corporation Act stipulates that the board members must use every opportunity to shape the development of the company as positively as possible in the interest of the shareholders and to avert damage. The supervisory boards are in turn obliged to ensure that the executive floor also exhausts such opportunities. For this reason, large corporations also applied for short-time work benefits or subsidies during Corona, only to end up with magnificent profits at the end of the year. Habeck’s advice to companies not to be reimbursed from the surcharge is, strictly speaking, a call to break the law. It is therefore also interesting to know whether the board of the listed RWE is not still being prosecuted by its own shareholders because, according to their own statements, they are on the allocation for the gas subsidiary Supply
Because of the compulsory levy, the traffic lights are now crunching noticeably. “The gas surcharge must change in such a way that companies that make huge profits simply do not benefit from it. That cannot be communicated,” explains Habeck party friend Anton Hofreiter, who is chairman of the Europe Committee in the Bundestag. The SPD co-chair Saskia Esken even threatened to blockade her parliamentary group in the Bundestag. Finance Minister Christian Lindner is open to possible improvements: “A measure of solidarity cannot serve to ensure that individual companies maintain their returns and make profits on them,” said the FDP leader on the ZDF program “Maybrit Illner”.
The gas allocation was apparently knitted with a hot needle. And has a variety of web bugs. The Raue law firm, for example, also complains that municipal utilities are allowed to withhold the state-imposed levy in full if they want to.
The lawyers continue to complain that the levy is not suitable for averting insolvency of importers like Uniper. Rather, the measure would drive up prices on the gas market even further. In addition, consumers of gas are disproportionately burdened. The Berlin lawyers are convinced that this violates the principle of equality according to Article 3 of the Basic Law. There it says: “All people are equal before the law.” Unequal treatment is only possible if it is constitutionally justified. However, there are strict requirements for this. That is why the law firm is examining the possibility of a constitutional complaint on behalf of “two handful of companies”.
The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (vzbv) also doubts that the gas surcharge can simply be added to fixed supply contracts. In some cases, the suppliers have incorporated a passage that allows such state intervention to be passed on. Whether this is legally watertight is controversial. Consumer advocates recommend customers to inform the suppliers in writing that the surcharge will only be paid “with reservations”.
The Bavarian Economics Minister Huber Aiwanger (Free Voters) describes it as a “bad joke by the federal government” that the surcharge should also apply to biogas. That is just as nonsensical as wind turbines having to pay a CO levy. “Such a legislative botch has no equal.”
The article “The chaos surrounding the gas levy” comes from WirtschaftsKurier.
