Status: 07/12/2021 12:48 p.m.
Union Chancellor candidate Laschet has in ARD summer interview Suggested that landlords share in additional CO2 costs for heating. The SPD considers this to be a smoke candle, property owners see the polluter pays principle violated.
The SPD has called statements by Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet about the participation of landlords in additional CO2 costs for heating as a “smoke candle”. “I do not trust Armin Laschet on the way. We could have divided the additional costs fairly long ago. Until recently, the real estate lobbyists within the CDU parliamentary group fought a fair allocation,” said SPD parliamentary group vice-president Sören Bartol, the dpa news agency.
Bartol added that the Union ministers had also been in favor of a 50/50 split. “I then ask myself where Armin Laschet has been in the last few months and where this change of heart suddenly comes from. For me this is nothing more than a smoke candle. The real politics of the Union shows: Armin Laschet has nothing left for tenants, she are just sitting alone on the costs. ”
“The current solution that the landlord does practically nothing will not last,” Laschet said of the compromise decided by the grand coalition. Landlords would have to expect to be involved in the additional costs in the future, said Laschet on Sunday in ARD summer interview. The decision of the federal government, according to which landlords should bear half of the costs for the CO2 price that has been in effect since January 1, failed due to the veto of the Union faction in the Bundestag. In the short term, just no other solution was conceivable, said Laschet.
Property owners insist on a steering function
The owners’ association Haus & Grund criticized Laschet’s demands for the sharing of additional costs. “A softening of the polluter pays principle for the CO2 price in tenancy law would be wrong,” said Gerold Happ, member of the federal management, the news agency dpa. “Landlords have no influence on the heating behavior and hot water consumption of tenants.” Both are decisive for CO2 emissions and the resulting costs.
Consequently, the CO2 price must also reach the tenants in order to develop a steering function. In order to relieve the tenants, government revenues from CO2 pricing should be repaid in the form of climate money that is the same for every citizen. “A lump sum return would relieve lower-income households more than high-income households, because low-income households emit less CO2 on average”.