Gas price brake: economy promotes one-off payment

The “Wirtschaftswise” Grimm has warned against too high expectations of the planned gas price brake. Since the gas price will remain high in the long term, a one-off payment makes more sense. So there is a greater incentive to save.

The chairwoman of the gas price commission, Veronika Grimm, has dampened expectations of the planned gas price brake. Since Germany is permanently ending its energy dependency on Russia, the gas price “will remain significantly higher than before the Russian attack on Ukraine due to the higher liquid gas procurement prices despite a gas price brake,” Grimm told the Funke media group.

“Get Savings Incentive”

Instead, the economics professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg proposed a one-off payment to consumers. “It will be important to have a high incentive to save. That would clearly be the case with a one-off payment,” she said.

“One would have a much smaller incentive to save if one were to lower the gas price by a certain percentage.” If you gave people a one-time payment, they would still get a lot out of using less gas.

Criticism: Commission of experts set up too late

Grimm also complained about the time pressure that the expert commission set up by the government to draw up proposals for the gas price brake was subjected to. “The decision to convene such a body could have been made a few months ago. After all, the development of gas prices was foreseeable,” she said.

The federal government recently announced a package of measures to support consumers because of rising energy prices. As part of this package, a price brake should ensure that private households and companies are not overwhelmed by developments on the gas market. The Commission wants to draw up a “resilient proposal” next weekend and present it to politicians.