At some point, German climate policy will have to decide how to deal with the CO2 price: Should it form itself based on framework conditions, or should it be politically determined down to individual industries and products?
In one case, the economy (and its customers) decide how they want to pass on their costs, reduce them or avoid them altogether.
This is how emissions trading works.
In the other case, there is a lot of steering and symbolism involved, as can now be seen again in the discussion about the price of petrol.
The Greens and their candidate for Chancellor Annalena Baerbock are under pressure to act because they are charging a much higher CO2 price than was recently decided.
Hundreds of euros per ton are under discussion.
That would certainly also be reflected in the gasoline price, which is still based on supply and demand on the oil market.
An amount seized
Without need, Baerbock now brings 16 cents into play.
This is a real amount, because how do you know how exactly a higher CO2 price would be reflected?
It is easy for their political opponents to turn this advance off its hinges.
But it is also part of the truth that climate policy has its high price.
Scholz and Scheuer prefer to remain silent about this.
Because it is very likely that pricing, which one day also has to be based on trading in CO2 certificates in the transport sector, will not stop at 16 cents higher fuel prices.
The SPD and Union should have dealt with the social cushioning of climate policy long ago.
It is not enough to demonize fossil fuels like the Greens and the Left Party and to treat price policy as a department of an anti-capitalist moral philosophy.
So far, only the FDP has been reasonably opposed to this (even if the “gasoline price brake” is not to be taken seriously).
There is still time until the general election.
Maybe the CDU, CSU and SPD will also make it.