Blunders, Bad Luck, and Bungling: The Coalition Provides Relief. For Whom, Exactly?

The coalition wants to relieve drivers through a tax cut. Applause, confetti, photo op. Finally, the commuter’s heart grows warm.

Anyone who believes a single cent of that will actually reach consumers probably also believes that the VAT reduction in the restaurant industry ended up on the customer’s plate. It didn’t. It ended up in the pockets of restaurant owners. And that exact script is now being performed again, this time starring the oil corporations.

The 17-Cent Choreography

The math is simple enough that you have to wonder whether nobody in the Chancellery can do it — or whether nobody wants to.

1. Before the cut, the corporations gradually raise the price by exactly the amount that will later be “reduced.”
2. After the cut, the price at the pump stays the same.
3. An obligation to pass the savings on? None whatsoever.

The result: the taxpayer finances the profit margins of oil corporations. This isn’t relief. It’s a state-subsidized cash flow for big corporations, neatly packaged as a fiscal gift.

An Ecological Disaster

While half of Europe is discussing how to break free from dependence on autocrats and escape the fossil fuel dead end, Germany in 2026 — twenty twenty-six — is subsidizing the combustion engine, diesel and gasoline, with public funds.

Everyone else gets to watch:

• If you take the train: you pay.
• If you ride a bike: you pay.
• If you work from home: you pay.
• If you drive an EV and were hoping for charging infrastructure: you pay.

Not everyone in this country drives a car to the office. A 9-euro transit ticket would have been a social and ecological masterstroke. But that doesn’t fit the worldview.

A Glance at the Portfolio Often Reveals More Than a Government Statement

Maybe someone should — before the next “relief” package is passed — take a look at the stock and asset portfolios of the Chancellor and the responsible minister. Directly, indirectly, through holdings, through networks, through old loyalties.

• Who finances the political career?
• Who sits on which supervisory boards?
• Who ultimately profits from precisely this legislation?

These aren’t conspiracy questions. These are compliance questions. In any mid-sized company, a conflict of interest like this would light up the legal department like a Christmas tree. In the Chancellery or a ministry, you’ll search for that in vain.

The Tax-Free Relief Bonus — The Next Shell Game

Because one gift to the oil corporations apparently isn’t enough, the coalition doubles down: the tax-free relief bonus. Sounds great. And it is — for those who actually get it.

Does anyone seriously believe the cashier at the discount store will be getting a 1,000-euro bonus anytime soon? Or the nurse who was applauded during the pandemic, the delivery driver, the cleaning worker? The temp-contract kindergarten teacher?

This time, they don’t even get the applause.

In practice, the beneficiaries will be:

• Employees in industries with strong collective bargaining agreements and well-paying employers.
• Executives and high earners, where the bonus replaces the next regular payout.
• Companies that use it to avoid a payroll-tax-liable wage increase.

Everyone else — meaning those who take the full brunt of inflation — gets nothing. Once again.

Windfall Profits? Hands Off, Please.

The windfall profits of the oil corporations remain untouched. And this despite the fact that prices at the pump have long since lost any connection to crude oil prices. Anyone who still believes in fair price formation through the “invisible hand” of the free market also believes in the Easter Bunny.

The knee-jerk killer argument: “Constitutional concerns.” Two reasons why that doesn’t hold up:

It works across half of Europe. Italy, Spain, the UK, Belgium — all have implemented windfall profit taxes on energy corporations. Their constitutions haven’t collapsed. The windfall tax is the new German Angst.

The same coalition has already set the precedent. CDU/CSU and SPD, with the help of the Greens, drilled through the constitutional debt brake — an actual constitutional intervention requiring a two-thirds majority. But a simple statutory windfall tax? Suddenly “not feasible.”

When politically desired, constitutional amendments happen. When politically unwanted, even a simple law is “constitutionally questionable.” That’s not legal scholarship — that’s prioritization, and it’s revealing.

A moral footnote: we’re not talking about just any profits. We’re talking about war profits. Profits fed to a significant degree by a geopolitical catastrophe. Not taxing these isn’t just economically wrong — it’s an ethical declaration of bankruptcy.

The Geopolitical Punchline

After the past few years, even the last ministerial bureaucrat should have understood: energy policy is security policy. Dependence on fossil fuel suppliers isn’t a comfort zone — it’s a strategic vulnerability. And yes — Trump’s USA now has to be soberly categorized as “anything but a reliable ally.”

Instead of becoming independent, instead of industrially preparing for the next crisis, instead of promoting innovation where the future is actually happening — this government continues its ideological blind flight. With a full tank, paid for by us.

What do you expect from a chancellor whose government launched on a field of broken promises? You expect exactly this.

A “relief” that isn’t one. An ecological disaster that props up the combustion engine. An industrial policy that subsidizes the wrong industry. And an oil-corporation Santa Claus with 17 cents of reserves in the bag.

What regulation would actually make a difference? A binding obligation to pass the tax cut through to consumers. Without it, every one of these decisions is pure corporate welfare with a PR label.

Translated with the help of Claude