CDU chancellor candidate Laschet expects landlords to share in CO2 heating costs

Conservative chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, who is currently most likely to succeed Angela Merkel following Germany's general elections in September, said landlords are likely to share with tenants the rising heating costs resulting from the country's CO2 price on heating fuels – but provided no proposal or details. "The current solution, that the landlord pays virtually nothing, will not stand," said Laschet in an interview with public broadcaster ARD. Currently, tenants – as the consumers – bear 100 percent of the carbon price on their heating costs. Laschet added that a solution was needed that was fair to both sides. He pointed out that landlords were often people who had one house. "That is their old-age provision, and therefore this must be solved in a socially just way."

An agreement by the government coalition to split the extra costs from Germany’s new carbon price on heating fuels 50:50 between landlords and tenants failed at the last moment in June because Laschet's conservative bloc vetoed it, arguing that landlords had no influence on tenants’ heating usage. According to current legislation, tenants will now need to continue to shoulder the additional costs caused by the CO2 price on oil and gas that was introduced on 1 January. Germany's national emissions trading system began this year with a fixed price of 25 euros per tonne of CO2, which translates into a price increase of around seven cents per litre of petrol, eight cents per litre of diesel, eight cents per litre of heating oil and 0.6 cent more per kilowatt hour of natural gas.