In Germany isn’t exactly engaged in politics at the moment, as if it were living in an “energy war” with Russia. This is how the federal government recently justified its “defense shield”, of which it is only clear that it is quite large, more than twice as large as all three previous relief packages put together. But if the Chancellor is taken seriously, the Germans should not find out exactly what it contains until the end of November, or perhaps not until December.
The federal government bought itself time with the three relief packages, but mostly only combated symptoms. Only with the defensive screen does she turn to the heart of the matter, the high gas prices. They are to be contained in a similar way to the electricity price brake decided in the third package.
But the electricity price brake, which was decided weeks ago, has not yet been introduced. It overlapped with the work on the gas levy, which went down “in the annals of history” before it could even come into force. This can be justified with things that have rolled over. Or with the fact that this government is not capable of crisis policy.
Scholz is taxing the nation’s patience
Other governments in Europe were faster and have long since installed what is still being worked on in Berlin. Olaf Scholz wants to calm things down when he says: “We want a solution that works.” Like the gas surcharge? It may be that not everything that was decided in France, Spain or Great Britain is “right”. It may be that the situation there is not quite as dramatic as in Germany. However, Scholz is straining the nation’s patience in a way that no longer seems appropriate to this dramatic situation.
Neither medium-sized companies nor private households know what to expect this winter. They still don’t know how secure the supply is, how expensive it will be, so they don’t know how to calculate. Many municipalities do not know how their public utilities are supposed to get through the crisis. Apart from schools, hospitals, kindergartens.
The fact that the care for the refugees is now overshadowing the year 2015 is hardly significant. In this regard, too, the government is showing a forbearance that raises the suspicion that what threatens to become a nuisance is being swept under the rug.
Where’s the “huge progress”?
It seems almost spooky when Prime Minister Malu Dreyer (SPD) claims to have discovered “huge progress” in the federal-state negotiations. The negotiations essentially consisted of the Federal Chancellor and Prime Minister informing each other of what they could not yet decide on, given that decisions had not yet been taken – on the gas price brake, electricity price brake and so on. All this is taking place before the election in Lower Saxony, which in some minds seems to play a bigger role than Russia.
Where’s the big advance? It won’t be that far in two weeks either: Then the “Gas Commission” will have laid its egg and there will first be an “interim report” from the federal government, followed a little later by the results of the tax estimate. Then we will see. energy war? Where’s the defense?
Until then, the following have not been clarified: housing allowances, hospitals, municipal utilities, public transport tickets, refugees, not to mention the boom part of the crisis, gas and electricity prices, not to mention the collateral damage of the crisis, inflation, which is responsible for all the government’s failures, especially in of pension and social policy even more serious. While there has always been hope that the country will emerge stronger from the crisis, there are big question marks in view of the red-green-yellow delay policy.
Scholz’s mantras
Like the previous government in the Corona crisis, this government also seems as if it does not see crisis policy as a state of emergency, but as if normal politics just had to puff up a bit. The federal-state dispute before the meeting on Tuesday was as symptomatic of this as Robert Habeck’s complaint about an overloaded ministry.
Institutions must function in times of need, but they only fulfill their task if they adapt flexibly. The states would have had enough time to get involved in federal decisions, and a ministry should be able to change course once the transformation dreams of the bloated management level have burst.
Olaf Scholz makes an effort to counteract this with incantations such as that of the strong nation and to appease the people. In fact, however, his government’s sluggish response to the crisis is threatening to provoke the protests that it wants to nip in the bud.
