In a key issues paper, members of Chancellor Scholz’s ruling SPD party have called on the government to support renters in Germany with rising utility bills. The demand came as German energy suppliers announced significant price hikes for the coming autumn. 

SPD calls for better protection for tenants amid gas crisis

The SPD party is calling on Chancellor Scholz’s government to take specific steps to help relieve both tenants and landlords from rising energy costs. In a key issues paper seen by the Süddeutsche Zeitung last week, the SPD parliamentary group put forward five key measures to provide relief in the short term.

One of the proposals is to make it temporarily impossible for a landlord to terminate a tenant’s rental contract if the tenant is unable to make advance payments or back payments for utilities. The SPD suggested that a six-month grace period should apply, and that the government could provide an interest-free loan to any landlord put into financial hardship by the measure. The SPD also demanded that any tenant defaulting on payments should not have their electricity or gas turned off.

With the measures, the party wants to not only provide financial relief to tenants, but also to small-scale landlords who perhaps rent one or two properties, often in their retirement, to give them a small but stable source of income.

“We don’t want to let anyone down,” said Kevin Kühnert of the SPD to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “No one should end up on the street just because they can no longer pay the horrendous additional costs or the cold rent.” 

Gas levy and bill hikes add to German renters’ woes

The demands come as tenants in Germany find themselves being squeezed from multiple angles. This week, the federal government approved a new “gas levy” that will allow gas companies to pass some of their spiralling procurement costs onto customers. This change will see bills rise come October - although it’s not yet clear exactly how big the increase will be.

Consumers will have to contend with further price rises on top of this, with suppliers warning that the bills will spike in the autumn. On Monday, RheinEnergie, one of Germany’s biggest providers that serves 2,5 million people around the city of Cologne, warned that a typical household could see their annual bill double from October 1.

According to AFP, the company has seen procurement costs for natural gas rise “almost 450 percent” over the past year. For a two-person household with an annual consumption of around 10.000 kilowatt-hours, this would see the bill jump from 960 euros a year ago to 2.002 euros.