German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reprimanded his conservative colleague and Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday amid bitter wrangling within the government coalition over how to tackle soaring fuel prices.<\/p>\n
“The chancellor is dismayed by the public spat and has urged Minister Reiche to exercise restraint,” sources close to Merz told dpa.<\/p>\n
The comments came after Reiche, from Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), launched a broadside against her coalition partners in the Social Democratic Party (SPD).<\/p>\n
“In recent weeks, our coalition partner has been putting forward proposals that are costly, ineffective and constitutionally questionable,” Reiche told broadcaster Welt TV. “This causes confusion and does not help consumers.”<\/p>\n
Prices at the pump have been soaring in Germany in recent weeks due to the war in Iran.<\/p>\n
The government introduced a measure limiting petrol stations to raising prices just once a day, but the policy has failed to bring down costs for motorists, with record highs registered after it took effect last week.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, the co-leader of the SPD, has publicly called on the government to enact further measures to relieve consumers.<\/p>\n
He has proposed a temporary reduction in energy tax, funded through a windfall tax designed to capture the exceptionally high profits made by energy companies during the crisis. Klingbeil, who also serves as vice chancellor, has also called for a flexible price cap on petrol, diesel and heating oil.<\/p>\n
Merz on Thursday dampened hopes of swift government action, but said he would favour intervening if prices do not drop following the ceasefire in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reprimanded his conservative colleague and Economy Minister Katherina Reiche on Friday amid bitter wrangling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[480,393,587,5,1341,3623,2947,3624],"class_list":{"0":"post-3549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-christian-democratic-union","9":"tag-friedrich-merz","10":"tag-german-chancellor","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-katherina-reiche","13":"tag-lars-klingbeil","14":"tag-press-conference","15":"tag-social-democratic-party"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}