At the microphone of our colleagues from RTBF, the socialist mainly mentioned the energy price crisis which is becoming “a social crisis”. Indeed, since the colossal increase in electricity and gas prices, bills have continued to swell to reach amounts never seen before.
To help the population, the government has already put certain things in place, recalls the Federal Minister of Economy and Labor. “We have implemented a social tariff on electricity and gas which benefits more than a million families, without which the electricity bill would be doubled and that of gas multiplied by five. There are also measures vis-à-vis the CPAS with the supply of electricity and gas from the fund. But we must go further so that those who do not benefit from these measures or the social tariff can be helped to cope with the explosion of bills” .
To do this, the PS has proposed to grant households – except the 10 to 20% richest – a check for 200 euros. This would still cost some 750 million euros. “We have to do it. It’s a necessity. There are proposals that are on the table, in particular with additional VAT revenue. There is money to be collected from producers who make excess profits since “they produce electricity at a much lower cost than the price at which it is sold. We asked the regulators to do a study to see how high these superprofits are. It is only a matter of days before that we come up with a solution. (…) I don’t care regarding the solution as long as we can respond to this energy crisis”, concludes Pierre-Yves Dermagne.
