Green Party's bold energy crisis plan: Taxes and relief

Green Party unveils radical plan to slash energy costs and tax the wealthy

Kathrin Göring-Eckardt may know many synonyms for bullshit, but her Green Party co-leader Katharina Dröge has a few of her own. What the government is doing, she says, is "a mess, a shambles, and a disappointment—a bunch of people just hurling insults at each other." Speaking to journalists in a Leipzig hotel conference room on Tuesday afternoon, the Green parliamentary group leader didn't mince words: "No one can stand to watch this anymore. No one can bear to listen to what this government is doing. It's unbearable. It's downright embarrassing."

What she's referring to is the reform efforts of the center-right and center-left coalition, which, after a year in office, have made painfully slow progress. On Tuesday, leaders from the CDU/CSU and SPD were locked in last-ditch negotiations over the details of healthcare reform. Meanwhile, the Greens were holding their own party retreat in Leipzig—and they didn't just use the occasion for Dröge's scathing critique. They also unveiled their own vision of how things should be done if they weren't stuck in opposition.

In a draft resolution on healthcare funding, the Greens propose not just stabilizing but cutting insurance contributions by two percentage points starting next year. To achieve this, they argue, the government need only implement—consistently—the recommendations put forward in March by an expert commission it had appointed. Instead, the coalition has cherry-picked measures that shift the burden onto policyholders.

The Greens are calling on the government to take on pharmaceutical companies and drive down drug prices more aggressively than currently planned. According to their paper, this alone could save health insurers over €5 billion a year. They also demand that statutory health insurers no longer be left footing the bill for healthcare costs of citizens on basic welfare (Bürgergeld). The projected savings if all so-called "non-insurance benefits" were transferred to the federal budget? €12 billion.

Higher Taxes on Booze and Bitcoin

But that money has to come from somewhere—which is precisely why the coalition is dragging its feet. The Greens propose two ways to fund it. First, they back the expert commission's recommendation to raise taxes on health-harming products (tobacco, alcohol, sugary drinks), though the commission had estimated this would bring in only around €2 billion annually.

To cover the shortfall, the Greens point to a tax plan they recently introduced, which would generate €20 billion a year through stricter taxation of property and cryptocurrency gains. This would indeed cover the welfare-related healthcare costs—but it would also eat up a large chunk of the extra revenue before it even arrives.

Defending the proposals, Dröge argued that in times of crisis, people need the security of knowing that "when they go to work in the morning, they'll still have a decent paycheck at the end of the month."

Her co-chair, Britta Haßelmann, added that such reforms are "especially important given the living conditions of so many people here in eastern Germany." With state elections looming this year in Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania—three regions where voters have relatively low purchasing power—the Greens are using their retreat to double down on everyday economic fairness.

A Different Kind of Scrappage Bonus

This focus extends to a second draft resolution outlining responses to the fossil fuel energy crisis. Among their proposals: a scrappage scheme for oil and gas heating systems, a €100 crisis payment for low- and middle-income households, means-tested electric vehicle subsidies, and a temporary return of the €9 monthly public transport ticket. To fund it all, they call for a windfall tax on oil companies—and a luxury tax on private jet flights and first-class tickets.

With this move, the parliamentary group is building on a resolution passed at the Green Party conference last autumn. The underlying strategy was already clear then: to escalate material conflicts in the name of the majority against "those at the top." The question, however, is who the party intends to implement such proposals with in a future government.

The conservative CDU/CSU bloc, for instance—the very same partners accused of obstruction and foot-dragging in the current coalition? Substantively, that would be difficult. And yet, talk of a black-green alliance has resurfaced in Green Party circles. Some lawmakers suggest that CDU/CSU figures are now more open to cooperation than in recent years, with new channels of dialogue emerging.

For their strategy retreat, the Greens even invited a Christian Democrat: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, once a rival to Friedrich Merz and, since last year, chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation—a position she assumed against Merz's wishes. Is this a signal for black-green cooperation? Or a gesture against the chancellor? Green parliamentary leader Britta Haßelmann frames it differently: ahead of this year's state elections, the key question is how to counter divisive politics. The Adenauer Foundation, she notes, has been deeply engaged in this issue for years. "And we know Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer very well and hold her in high regard."