The finance minister is actually spending his vacation in the Allgäu to gain strength for the last phase of the election campaign - that is, for the weeks in which he wanted to work on the long-awaited upswing of his social democrats after the self-dismantling of the two competitors.

But then the flood came, and the head of department made a trip to the nearby Bavarian floodplain at the side of Markus Söder - and then to Berlin, in order to resolve the necessary change in the federal cabinet for the emergency aid.

His concern is not so much the pithy appearance in rubber boots as the sober financial reassurance for those affected.

Patrick Bernau

Responsible editor for economics and "Money & More" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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Ralph Bollmann

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of economics and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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Nothing could alleviate the suffering of those who had lost relatives in the floods, emphasized Olaf Scholz in the capital when he talked about the aid payments at the side of the Christian Social Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

But everything that can be materially compensated, the state wants to compensate: The two politicians left no doubt about that, the man with the ambition of Chancellor as well as the CSU politician, who will retire with the Chancellor in autumn and not a day before what was ultimately one of the most ardent goals of his political work.

In July, the federal and state governments want to distribute around 400 million euros in emergency aid to those affected, a kind of bonus of up to 3500 euros per household, in order to make ends meet at short notice.

What the reconstruction will cost in the end, however, cannot be foreseen at all.

Scholz referred to the last major flood in 2013, when the repair of the damage cost the state around six billion euros in the end.

It could easily be more this time - which is not only due to the greater extent of the devastation, but also to the fact that the public sector has been measuring the aid to the victims more generously from time to time.

In Germany in the early 21st century, the government has enough money.

It is a relatively recent thought that the state will compensate flood victims

It is still a relatively new idea in Germany that it is primarily the task of the state and not of insurance companies or aid organizations to almost completely compensate citizens for damage caused by natural disasters. It did not finally prevail until the flood of 2002, which hit Saxony in particular and also fell in the middle of a federal election campaign; That in this country the vote traditionally falls in September and thus in the time immediately after the summer storms, proves to be fortunate for those affected. Georg Milbradt, at that time Prime Minister in Dresden, warned of a "dangerous precedent", as it was called in his state government. The concerns were primarily directed against compensation for indirect damage, such as lost sales in commercial operations.

Above all, it has to do with the corona pandemic that this point is widely agreed for the first time in 2021: After the state not only reimbursed the restaurateurs with fixed costs last autumn, but also reimbursed the lost sales ("November aid"), he can hardly refuse that to the flood victims. This was still the question that the state had rejected after the floods of 2013 with the most succinct of all possible formulations. "Can damage caused by loss of sales be eligible for funding? No, ”it said briefly and clearly in the relevant information sheet from Saxony.