The federal government's third relief package leaves so many fundamental questions unanswered when it comes to energy costs that those first involved are reminded of the mistakes made in the gas surcharge.

“One problem with the gas levy was that practical things were lost.

That must not happen again," warned the general manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU), Ingbert Liebing, to the FAZ.

"Therefore, our urgent warning is not to fabricate any quick fixes that cannot be realized afterwards." The municipal utilities, which VKU represents, have neither the computer programs nor the data to provide the basic supply for customers or the "accidental profits" to be skimmed off to calculate companies.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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The head of the energy association BDEW, Kerstin Andreae, warned that the government must specify the measures "quickly".

"In particular, the planned interventions in the highly complex market are extremely sensitive and require a well-founded professional impact assessment," Andreae told the FAZ and can be mapped without a great deal of effort.” Solutions are needed that are easy to calculate and uncomplicated to implement: “Timely implementation is only possible if the administrative effort is reduced to a minimum.”

Andreae and Liebing referred to the traffic light coalition's plan to relieve citizens and business by 65 billion euros, a large part of which should be made available in the energy sector.

The government wants to siphon off “windfall profits” from utilities who benefit from high electricity prices linked to gas prices.

This money is intended to enable private households and small and medium-sized companies to have cheaper basic consumption.

It remains unclear whether all households should benefit

Even on Monday, the government could not explain how the 65 billion euros are made up.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) only said on Sunday that 32 billion should be financed from the existing budget plans for this year and next.

The energy details are also still unclear.

So it seems unclear whether all households should benefit from the price brake or only those up to a certain income limit.

A spokeswoman for Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) was evasive on Monday: "I can't give a final answer to that either, that's also being discussed and then poured into a concrete proposal."

The statement is remarkable in that there is no indication in the decision of the coalition committee that this relief measure could be differentiated according to income group.

Greens leader Omid Nouripour has now said that the electricity price brake should primarily benefit people with little money.

It will be about small amounts of electricity that you need to make ends meet, he said on Deutschlandfunk: "We're talking about a family in 48 square meters and not about a villa."

Association leader Liebing made it clear on the implementation: If a price brake with a basic budget should also be designed to be income-dependent, the suppliers would not be able to implement it.

The companies have no knowledge of the size of the households and certainly not of their financial situation.

The necessary data and programs were missing.

You can't do that in four weeks.

The municipal utilities themselves feared that their customers would default.

7 to 8 percent have already been priced in, and 25 percent is possible in individual municipalities.

Prices continue to rise after delivery stop

With regard to the currently high gas prices, the coalition resolutions contain, above all, a reference to a commission of experts, which is to prepare relief.

Prices have continued to rise since Russia announced on Friday that it would continue to refrain from sending gas through the main Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

On Monday, a megawatt hour costs 284 euros in Amsterdam futures trading, almost a third more than on Friday and ten times the previous year's price.

Liebing expects that gas suppliers who are reaching their liquidity limits will have to prioritize their customers in the future.

Municipal customers such as schools or hospitals would then continue to be supplied, but not commercial customers.

The VKU boss demanded that the commission of experts on gas have to follow a European approach so that the energy that is cheap in Germany does not flow to other EU countries.

The head of the German Energy Agency Dena, Andreas Kuhlmann, demanded that the expert commission must ensure that medium-sized industry also get through the crisis: "We have gained nothing if industry closes and then opens again in other countries with lower costs, even only if the emissions were higher there,” warned the energy expert.