Deadline expires
Energy flat rate: Students and trainees receive an additional 200 euros
Around a fifth of German students have not yet applied for the energy flat rate (symbolic photo)
© Christian Ohde / Picture Alliance
A few days before the deadline, around one in five students had not yet applied for the energy flat rate that started in the spring. With these four steps you can get around 200 euros.
By Aristotelis Zervos
This post first appeared at RTL.de
Since mid-March, students and specialist students have been able to enjoy the flat rate energy price of 200 euros. The payment of the money will now end next Monday, October 2nd. So far, a good 2.82 million applications have been received from the 3.5 million eligible people. Around a fifth of students have not yet made use of the payments.
Who gets the energy allowance?
In order to receive the 200 euro flat rate energy cost allowance, the following requirements must be met:
- Anyone who was enrolled at a university on December 1, 2022 or was in vocational training at that time is entitled to the money. For example, educators, technicians or business economists are trained at technical schools.
- The prerequisite is a place of residence or “habitual residence” in Germany on this date.
- Part-time students, participants in dual study programs, foreign students and those who are currently taking a semester off should also benefit from the payment.
The energy price allowance is neither taxed nor credited against any social benefits.
Four steps to get the 200 euros:
The one-off payment can be made via the portal one-time payment200.de can be applied for in four steps:
- Enter access code: Students and specialist students should have received an access code from their training institution. The access code is the personal key to access the application.
Prove identity: Those authorized must register with a BundID, which they can create in advance.
Online application fill out: To apply, you only need to have your account details (IBAN) ready and the declaration confirmed. The application can now be sent online.
Receive one-time payment: If all requirements are met, applicants will receive a notification of approval by email and the 200 euros will be credited to the specified account.
There has been repeated criticism that those affected have to create a user account with the federal government, a so-called BundID account, in order to clearly identify themselves when applying.
It has now been clarified that this does not necessarily require the online function of the ID card or an “Elster certificate”, as is used for online tax returns, but that a simple BundID account with a user name and password can also be created .
The traffic light coalition had already agreed on the special payment in September 2022. The practical implementation was difficult and took more than half a year. A quick transfer of the 200 euros was slowed down, among other things, by the fact that the account details of all affected students and specialist students were not available centrally.
The federal and state governments repeatedly got into arguments when trying to create an application platform. It was about data protection, responsibilities and technical details. Student representatives and the opposition in the Bundestag had criticized the slow process.