Coalition wants ceiling on energy bill from 1 November | Politics

The government parties want the cabinet to cap the high energy bills ofcitizens before this autumn. The cabinet is still consulting with energycompanies all day long about whether this is feasible.

This morning, the group leaders of coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA andChristenUnie again discussed a way to curb the rising energy costs of citizensand businesses. The four would prefer a so-called price ceiling to beintroduced as of 1 November. This means that a household that does not usemore gas and electricity than average will never lose more than a maximumamount.

The cabinet will continue talks this afternoon after a long meeting yesterday.Today, the party leaders of PvdA and GroenLinks are also joining us, whopreviously asked for a price ceiling. Their support is needed to get thegovernment’s budget plans through the Senate.

Furthermore, Minister Rob Jetten (Climate and Energy) is again negotiatingwith the energy companies today whether 1 November is indeed feasible. Themajor airlines have already said they can. But the smaller companies would notsucceed until January 1. The Netherlands has about 35 energy companies.

Energy tax

The government will compensate energy companies if the price of gas andelectricity is higher than the agreed maximum amount that they can chargecitizens. It is not yet possible to say how many billions of euros that willcost. That depends on how high the gas price will be next winter. It has beenagreed in the coalition that the proposed reduction in energy tax for nextyear will then no longer be necessary.

It is not yet clear how high the ceiling will be. In The Hague, bandwidthscirculate between 1200 to 1500 cubic meters of gas and 2500 to 3000 kilowatthours of electricity per year. Until that limit is reached, people will thenpay the rate that applied to the invasion of Ukraine at the beginning of thisyear. Anything above that must be settled at the higher market rate. In thisway, the cabinet wants to ‘incentivize’ everyone to use energy economically.

In addition, the cabinet is working on an emergency fund that can help peoplewho can no longer pay their energy bills. In this way, it should be preventedthat defaulters are closed next winter.

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