The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) has warned that today's federal-state meeting, which will primarily deal with state aid in view of the high energy prices, will not produce an adequate result.

It was good that the federal government announced at the end of last week that it would help with 200 billion euros, said Söder on Tuesday morning in Berlin.

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) had announced a "double boom".

Söder now said in an interview with journalists that it was important that the meeting of the Prime Ministers' Conference (MPK) did not just result in a "Wümmschen".

He expects a "signal";

if this does not come, the meeting is only "a missed opportunity".

Above all, one must agree on a gas price brake, said the CSU chairman.

This should “under no circumstances be complicated, not overly bureaucratic”.

Otherwise you run the risk of such an instrument becoming a flop.

Söder, who expressed fundamental doubts about the craftsmanship of the federal government, also called for a quick agreement on an electricity price brake.

Price brake also for petrol and heating oil?

Since it is not clear when there will be a European electricity price brake, a national solution must also be considered.

You also have to think about brakes for "fuel prices" and heating oil.

Without giving any figures, the Bavarian Prime Minister called for a comprehensive solution.

"In the crisis it is right to make a big solution, not a small one." He again distanced himself from the debt brake.

This is a "Potemkin village," said Söder, "a self-deception".

For the federal-state meeting, which is scheduled to begin in the late afternoon after it had been postponed in the previous week due to the Chancellor's corona infection, the Bavarian Prime Minister also called for an agreement on favorable options for using local transport.

With regard to the temporarily introduced 9-euro ticket, he said that such tickets are something for metropolitan areas, but they are not suitable for rural areas because there is a lack of local transport.

Also, Söder demanded, the federal and state governments would have to agree on the support of hospitals.

After all, the federal government shouldn't let the states sit on the "exorbitantly high costs" for accommodating refugees.

Söder was convinced that it was "wise" to seek consensus from the federal and state governments in the crisis.

In his opinion, Chancellor Scholz is interested in this.

But he was prevented from doing so by his "wing partners" the FDP and the Greens.