Schwerin (dpa/mv) - The municipalities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania sound the alarm after the Federal Ministry of Economics declared the gas alert level. One looks with concern at the coming heating season, explained the city and community day MV on Monday. The association fears that municipal suppliers will go bankrupt. As owners, cities and municipalities could also be forced to absorb deficits in their municipal utilities. A spokesman for the City and Municipal Day made it clear that they were not in a position to do so. In the past, the municipal utilities usually paid out profits to their municipalities every year, which they used to subsidize local public transport, for example.
"Should there be supply bottlenecks and the emergency level be declared, this will not only be clearly felt by all citizens. Our utility companies will then also have to carry out very costly follow-up purchases without being able to refinance them immediately and in full," explained the chairman of the municipal association, Wismar Mayor Thomas Beyer (SPD), the situation. "Thus, through no fault of their own, they get into liquidity bottlenecks that may endanger their existence."
This must be prevented, Beyer demanded. The cities and municipalities with their municipal supply mandate expect a suitable set of instruments from the federal and state governments. According to a spokesman, the introduction of a surcharge for gas purchases, which large and small suppliers would have to pay equally, is conceivable, so that the burden would be shared. This surcharge should be stretched over several years - in the hope that the procurement prices will fall again later and the burden will be spread over time. The Ministry of Economic Affairs in Schwerin only briefly commented on request. "Basic talks are currently taking place between the federal and state governments," said a spokesman.
The cities and communities as owners of the municipal utilities and regional suppliers also called for economical use of gas and electricity. Every gigawatt hour of gas saved and every kilowatt hour of electricity saved helps, they say.
