The good news first: Markus Söder recently learned how much a liter of gasoline costs. In June he was only able to answer the question after an employee quickly sent him a text message on his cell phone. Now one can say in his defense that a prime minister with a company car, which he never fills up himself, does not need to know the current fuel price down to the last cent. For someone who recently wanted to become Federal Chancellor, the ignorance was nevertheless embarrassing.
If Söder of all people is acting as the motorist’s lawyer shortly before the general election and is demanding an increase in the commuter tax allowance to compensate for the high fuel costs, then that certainly has nothing to do with real interest in the subject. Rather, it is an expression of the desperate helplessness that has seized even the most hardened Union politicians when looking at the devastating polls.
A little populism is not forbidden in the election campaign. Here, however, it becomes dangerous, because no task will be more urgent for the next federal government than the fight against climate change. This includes being honest with people and clearly saying that climate protection will not be available for free – even and certainly not in road traffic: Either a driver changes his behavior by buying an electric car, for example, or by taking a bus and trains, or he will pay the previously hidden environmental costs of his actions himself in the future.
The Union is pretending to be more stupid than it is
The waning grand coalition, in which the CDU and CSU are known to be involved, has long admitted this and imposed a penalty tax on CO₂ emissions. The levy, whose aim is also to make the use of cars with combustion engines less attractive, has increased the price of a liter of petrol by eight cents this year alone. Further increases will follow, some experts say that the price of fuel would have to rise by 70 cents per liter for Germany to achieve its climate targets. If the drivers of combustion engines suddenly got their additional costs again elsewhere, namely via a higher commuter allowance, this would reduce the incentive mechanism that has just been created ad absurdum. That would be about as useful as starting a fire in a citizen’s living room and then delivering a bucket of water to extinguish them with.
Strictly speaking, one could even go further and say: The commuter allowance should not be increased – it should be abolished. After all, nobody in Germany is forced to drive 40 kilometers to work every day. On the contrary: everyone has the right to decide for themselves where he or she wants to live. Some move to the city because the cultural offerings are bigger or the schools are better. The others move to the country because they love nature and the children can play outside. Either way, the motives are mostly private. But why should the state not subsidize rural residents, who also blow huge amounts of CO₂ into the air with their commuting, and work colleagues who live in the city and pay significantly more rent? . There is also no flat-rate tie-rate for people who still have to appear in the office with a tie, but who can be shown to only wear jogging suits at home.
The election campaign issues would have to be completely different
It is of course correct that many citizens cannot afford an apartment or even a house in the city. The state cannot simply leave them all alone, Söder, Prime Minister of a large country, is absolutely right. The solution, however, cannot be to receive and even expand a tax bonus with billions of euros that cement a technology that the same state wants to replace elsewhere with even more billions with a more environmentally friendly one. If the current debate were really about the climate, then the Union would have to talk about completely different things instead of the commuter allowance: about a rapid acceleration in housing construction, the promotion of green hydrogen, the expansion of local public transport and e-charging networks, and other incentives to buy for electric cars and, yes, maybe also about changes to the employee lump sum.
Of course, Markus Söder and his party friend and Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer know all of this very well. If they unpack the oldest election campaign hit with the commuter flat rate that the CDU and CSU have in their moths, then they only prove one thing: that there is simply panic in the Union.