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Berlin (German news agency) – The state hardship aid for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is equipped with 750 million euros, has hardly been called up so far. “As of July 5, 2023, a total of 255 applications with an application volume of around 11.3 million euros were made in the federal states. Payments of around 1.64 million euros were made for 98 applications,” quotes “Welt am Sonntag” from a report by the Federal Ministry of Economics to the Budget Committee of the Bundestag.
So far, only a good one percent of the budget funds allocated for companies with sharply increased energy costs have been requested. Most applications – namely 39 – came nationwide from restaurants, pubs and takeaways. There are 23 applications from the hotel industry and 14 from bakeries. From the point of view of the Ministry of Economic Affairs there are two reasons for this: the recent positive development of energy prices on the one hand, which means that the demand is “less than originally feared”. On the other hand, the program criteria are “very narrow”, which means that the program remains “recognizable to be limited to very few cases of hardship”. At the Central Association of the German Bakery Trade, one resists the impression that the industry is doing better than it portrays. The situation in many companies is “still tense,” said Deputy General Manager Friedemann Berg of “Welt am Sonntag”. He sees the reason for the low number of applications in the strict rules. “The criteria are formulated so narrowly that hardly any artisan bakery has been or will be recognized as a case of hardship,” said Berg, calling for faster and less bureaucratic access. With the low call-up numbers, medium-sized companies repeat what is shown in a similar program for private households. According to a survey by “Welt am Sonntag”, only 124.5 million euros of the 1.8 billion euros in fuel aid provided have so far been applied for and 38.4 million euros paid out. CDU budget politician Yannick Bury warned against using the funds from the Economic Stabilization Fund (WSF) that are not required for hardship and fuel aid for other purposes. “It must be clear that unneeded debt cannot simply be reallocated to other traffic light projects,” Bury said.
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