Podium vs Print: "A certain priority" and the €25 a month that got funded instead

The podium. At a Chamber of Commerce event in Berlin on 3 November, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said a cut in electricity tax for everyone had “a certain priority” for him over other energy measures such as a fuel-price brake or a price cap¹. “That is a great effort for the budget,” he said, adding that he had told the finance minister “we have to manage it” for 2027, at a cost of about €5 billion in lost revenue. “But we should do it”¹.

The print. On Wednesday evening, the coalition groups met in special sessions on the budget, and the list that emerged did not include it. Union and SPD have found no financing for the cut, Focus reports, citing Spiegel and ARD; in theory the roughly €5.4 billion needed to bring the tax down to the European minimum could still be covered at the budget committee’s clean-up session on Thursday, but given how tight the budget is, that is considered unlikely^2,4. What did get funded: the monthly €25 child supplement for nearly three million children affected by poverty will keep being paid, against earlier plans to cut it, and the SPD says €300 million of housing-benefit cuts are off the table^2,3. The sugar tax moves to the start of 2028 and the plastic-packaging tax will not come in 2027³.

The gap. It is real, but it is not a scandal. A chancellor can set a priority; only a parliamentary budget committee can finance one. The mood in one of the group meetings was described as “mau”, lacklustre³. Desk arithmetic: €5.4 billion is the price of one pledge; €25 a month for nearly three million children comes to at most about €900 million a year, roughly a sixth of it.

For you. If you were counting on a lower electricity bill from January, do not budget for it yet. If your household receives the child supplement or housing benefit, the print is better news than the podium was. Thursday’s session is where the line items become law-in-waiting.