Robert Habeck is now used to being publicly contrite.

"No political highlight" was the sudden stop of the KfW building subsidy, he admitted on Tuesday in a hastily arranged press conference.

It "really hurts" him to have caused so much disappointment.

Already the week before, after his ministry had summarily stopped all programs for new buildings and renovations in the face of a flood of applications and those affected gave free rein to their anger, Habeck admitted his guilt in the Bundestag.

He promised that nothing like this would ever happen again.

Julia Loehr

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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At least those who were still able to apply to the state development bank should now get money after all.

Many others who are still sitting over the papers will remain disappointed.

Ironically, the Green Economics and Climate Protection Minister cuts the funding for energy-efficient houses?

Scandal!

Habeck knew his job would not be easy. He wanted it that way. When the coalition talks began after the federal election, the Greens quickly made it clear that they wanted more than just a prettied-up Ministry of the Environment. If not finances, then a super ministry for economy and climate protection. At the beginning of December, Habeck stood for the first time in the ministry's wood-panelled Ludwig-Erhard hall and courted the trust of the employees. They could now "write history together," he called out to them, turning the social into an ecological-social market economy. For the good of all, man and nature. If he succeeds, Habeck could become the next chancellor. When.

At the moment, however, he is just getting to know the small things of his super ministry. What's next for the insolvent MV shipyards? How many cash injections for the Galeria department stores are still justifiable? Where can restaurateurs in the bridging aid IV set the costs for the vaccination certificate checks? How much does Omikron dampen growth? Can the Munich chip supplier Siltronic be sold to Taiwan? Who should lead the Federal Network Agency? These were just a few of Habeck's construction sites in recent weeks. Meanwhile, the Bavarian Prime Minister explained to him that his state was unfortunately not very suitable for wind turbines, that the EU Commission classified nuclear and gas-fired power plants as sustainable, and that climate activists stuck themselves to motorways with superglue.

While the Chancellor has been seen so seldom in the past few weeks that people have been looking for him on social networks using the hashtag #WoistScholz, Habeck is felt to be everywhere.

He rushes from appointment to appointment, from topic to topic.

And it doesn't seem quite as confident as in the days of the election campaign, when it was Annalena Baerbock who was under pressure to explain, and Habeck let the television cameras watch her while she was being watched.

Only 22,000 private households should be affected

The bank consultants, who tried in vain on the morning of January 24 to submit applications to KfW on behalf of builders, initially believed it was a technical fault.

One of the most important funding programs of the federal government, suspended overnight?

They had never experienced anything like this before.

First, Habeck said that of the 24,000 applications still open, 22,000 came from private households.

The ministry later had to correct that it was mostly companies that were affected and just a little more than 4,000 private households.

The 22,000 mentioned by Habeck in the Bundestag no longer appear in the minutes of the plenary session.

It left the impression of a great mess.