Hurrah! German engineering did it again! While the rest of Europe fumbles around with margin caps (France), price caps (Hungary), VAT reductions (Spain, 21% to 10%), or structural market regulation, Germany's Wirtschaftsminister, Katherina Reiche, found the only measure that reliably does absolutely nothing to alleviate excess energy profits: a glorious Kraftstoffmaßnahmenpaket. Never mind petrol in Germany hitting €2.075/litre—what matters is that from now on increases will only occur once per day, with proper teutonic order. Imagine how grateful the car loving German Pendler must be when they find out that Austria's identical regime failed to reduce prices, and has long been superseded by the Austrians themselves.
Of course, that’s precisely the point. "Gas-Kathi"—partner of notorious Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the disgraced former minister turned lobbyist—is not here to serve the public. Like Mann's Hendrik Höfgen, she is an opportunist for whom career is the only ideology and power the only patron. She moved directly from the Transport Ministry into VKU, the municipal utilities lobby. LobbyControl called it unacceptable—nobody cared. For five years as CEO of E.ON's gas grid empire, Westenergie, she simultaneously chaired the Government's National Hydrogen Council—advising the state on energy strategy while running one of its largest incumbents. And then, it reads like a practical joke, she joined the cabinet to regulate her own industry. Famous for her crusade against the fictional Heizungsterror and her systematic deceleration of renewables, gas is the instrument of her advancement, as Nazism was Höfgen's. Unsurprisingly, she just commissioned 20 gigawatts of new gas capacity to “future-proof” global warming.
The real issue is this: Germany's energy market is a formally documented price-fixing oligopoly. Five vertically integrated majors — Aral (BP), Shell, Esso (ExxonMobil), Jet (ConocoPhillips), and TotalEnergies — control 65% of fuel sales through centralised algorithmic pricing, underpinned by a wholesale indexing system functionally identical to the Libor scandal: two private firms compile benchmarks from self-reported data, facilitating collusion and manipulation. When Aral or Shell raises, the others follow within three hours—Germany proudly ensures that oil price shocks hit consumers faster than anywhere else in Europe. That’s market competition, German-style!
The same toxic mixture of reckless self-interest and regulatory capture pervades Germany’s electricity market. For two decades Germany proclaimed itself the world's green energy conscience, then killed nuclear without replacement, strangled solar subsidies at the precise moment global costs collapsed, and failed to build the transmission lines connecting cheap northern wind to southern industry—blocked for years by Bavaria's pathologically ambitious Schmutzler-Ministerpräsident, a Shrek in Lederhosen. Renewables hit 60% of generation in 2024 while a quarter of offshore wind was wasted because the cables do not exist.
Today, Germany's electricity prices are among the highest in the EU: the “merit order” ties wholesale prices to gas and the industry-exempt EEG levy inflates household bills. Every new wind turbine and solar panel lower wholesale prices, but widen the guaranteed-price gap and make the EEG larger. As a result, Germany’s stunning achievement is at once more renewables and higher prices, while fossil generators collect windfall rents and heavy industry pays nothing. The solution under Merz: further socialise the cost through corporate subsidies, while leaving all structural failures intact.
This is not policy failure. It is policy success—for the right people. Friedrich Merz is Germany's modern Diederich Hessling, with a law degree and two private aircraft. The former BlackRock lobbyist-in-chief built his career on the boards of BASF, Bayer, Deutsche Börse, HSBC, Commerzbank, AXA, and Airbus. His political method is proximity to power, never its use for the public good—a “Merz Leck Eier” meme recently went viral. Famous for calling migrant children kleine Paschas, denigrating immigrants in the Stadtbild, and breaking his Brandmauer pledge in precisely 77 days, der Untertan does not reform the system. He is the system, wearing the costume of the state.
This is why Germany diagnoses problems with immaculate thoroughness—and then does absolutely nothing about them. The trains don't run. The Autobahn crumbles. The bridges collapse. The broadband doesn't reach. Meanwhile, 95% of the €500 billion Sondervermögen—solemnly breaking the constitutional debt brake for national renewal—was zweckentfremdet in 2025 to plug Haushaltslöcher and service CDU/CSU clientele: Mütterrente, not Klimaschutz.
Germany, once the land of Dichter und Denker, is now a republic of the revolving door, managed mediocrity, and institutionalised corporate interest. The only genuine beneficiaries are the right-wing extremist Alternative für Deutschland, now at a record 19.5% in a western Bundesland.
Back to Heinrich Heine: Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht.
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