The German government's planned gas price cap applies to 70 percent of the previous year's consumption. Companies that were no longer capable of production as of July 2021 are thus out of luck: "Their lower gas demand in 2021 would be a brake on the longed-for brake," says the Steel and Metal Processing Trade Association (WSM).
The association is addressing Economics and Climate Minister Robert Habeck with an appeal to take this into account via Paul Ziemiak, a member of the Bundestag. The WSM proposes to take twice the consumption of the first half of 2021 as a basis. Or to choose another "normal" year as the reference year. "That would correspond to the actual gas demand. We must prevent that the disaster victims, of all people, pay on the price cap. Many would not survive this additional hardship," fears WSM CEO Christian Vietmeyer.