Some energy suppliers have increased their prices, others could follow. Therefore, at the end of January, the government announced a one-off energy cost compensation of 150 euros. How this can actually be paid out to households stirs up emotions.
After the energy suppliers intended as payment points had already warned of data protection and administrative problems, constitutional lawyer Peter Bußjäger from the University of Innsbruck and Thomas Lohninger from the fundamental rights platform “epicenter.works” now have serious concerns. They do not believe in a quick payout.
As a representative of the e-business, Michael Strugl referred to a necessary legal basis, which, however, does not exist. The problem is: How are energy suppliers supposed to know how much a customer earns and how big their household is? To do this, they would have to receive this data from the federal government, and this is where the concerns begin – both in terms of data protection and the administrative burden. The energy suppliers would get this sensitive data from the state just to pay out a subsidy. “In my view, that would clearly be excessive,” said Lohninger.
The Ministry of Finance has announced that the legal basis is being worked on, but the Ministry itself cannot process the reimbursement of costs. Almost all households should benefit, except for those with very high incomes. The compensation should come for people up to an upper earnings limit of around 5600 euros gross per month, for multi-person households up to twice the amount, according to the plans. Wifo and SPÖ suggested compensating for the high energy costs with a reduction in VAT on energy. SPÖ energy spokesman Alois Schroll spoke of “taunting” because people “still haven’t seen any money” since the beginning of the heating season. FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl said: “The equalization of energy costs is the government’s next fraud on the population.”
Source: Nachrichten
