German minister pushes direct payments amid energy crisis

German Labour Minister Hubertus Heil has advocated for new ways of making direct state payments to citizens in light of the energy crisis, reported dpa.

"For the future we will need such a mechanism for making direct payments, so that we can relieve the burden quickly and precisely in times of crisis," Heil told dpa in Berlin.

In their coalition agreement, the Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) announced the development of a mechanism for direct payments to compensate for rising CO2 prices.

Last summer, however, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, from the FDP, had announced that it would take at least 18 months to compile the necessary data such as tax identification and account numbers for such direct payments to all citizens.

Heil, from the SPD, is pushing a call for a way of making direct payments in the context of the energy crisis and the Russian war in Ukraine. In the past months, he said, there had already been one-off payments via the basic income support scheme and the energy lump sum to pensioners.

However, the lump sums had not yet been launched as socially differentiated direct payments because such a payment mechanism did not yet exist.

The finance minister is now creating the "technical preconditions" to make such a mechanism possible in the future, Heil said.