Coal penny
The coal pfennig was a surcharge on the electricity prices of the energy supply companies in the Federal Republic of Germany to finance coal mining . The coal pfennig was paid by consumers in the old federal states from 1974 to 1995 and abolished after the Federal Constitutional Court found it to be an unconstitutional special tax (electricity tax ).
history
The aim of the coal penny was to finance hard coal mining in Germany , which would not have been competitive with other countries without the coal penny. The revenue in 1975 was around 780 million DM (corresponds to 1 billion euros adjusted for purchasing power) and had risen to around 5.5 billion DM (4.3 billion euros) by 1992. The amount of the surcharge on the individual electricity bill varied depending on the federal state, in 1990 it was an average of 8.25%. The plan was to raise half of the coal pfennig from 1996 in the new federal states as well.
The individual federal states benefited from the levy to varying degrees: from 1976 to 1987, Bavarian consumers paid around 2.2 billion DM (2 billion euros) more into the electricity generation fund than the Bavarian electricity industry received in grants. In contrast, North Rhine-Westphalia had a positive balance of more than 4.8 billion DM (4.4 billion euros) in the same period.
Constitutionality
On October 11, 1994, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the coal pfennig is unconstitutional. So there was the RWE law, which had refused to pay the coal penny for the year 1985th The Federal Constitutional Court argued that the coal pfennig was not justifiable because it burdens a general public of electricity customers who have no particular responsibility for financing hard coal from Germany. The coal pfennig was therefore abolished at the end of 1995. Since then, coal mining has been subsidized from the state budget . Between 1975 and 2002 the total amount of the subsidy was around 80 to 100 billion euros (2003 prices).
See also
literature
- Hans-Georg Dederer: BVerfGE 91, 186 - coal pfennig. On the constitutionality of special charges: the criterion of the financial responsibility of the materially tax burdened . In: Jörg Menzel (Hrsg.): Constitutional Law. Hundreds of decisions by the Federal Constitutional Court in retrospect . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-16-147315-9 , p. 551-555 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e BVerfG, decision of October 11, 1994, Az. 2 BvR 633/86, BVerfGE 91, 186 - Kohlenpfennig.
- ↑ Staffan Jacobsson, Volkmar Lauber , The politics and policy of energy system transformation — explaining the German diffusion of renewable energy technology . Energy Policy 34, (2006), 256-276, p. 270, doi: 10.1016 / j.enpol.2004.08.029 .
