How to keep some energy discounts without breaking the budget

The government seems to want to rethink the subsidies on bills, making them less expensive and more targeted on the German model. But the instrument adopted by Berlin must be remodeled on the Italian context

The government will have to decide, within the next week, whether and in what form to extend the discounts on bills. These measures, adopted in full emergency, have reached an unsustainable cost. The executive has made it clear that it wants to rethink the concessions, making them less expensive and more targeted. Ministers Giancarlo Giorgetti and Gilberto Pichetto Fratin filtered various intervention hypotheses: on the one hand, following the German model which provides for discounts on a volume of energy around 70-80 per cent of historical consumption, to preserve an incentive to save energy ; on the other, the introduction of a staggered tariff (as is already the case for water) to discourage increases in consumption; on the other, a system of tax credits that increase as prices rise. A focus by Istituto Bruno Leoni describes the German mechanism (the so-called “price brake”) and discusses its applicability in Italy.