By Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) - The leader of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats has suggested using a windfall tax on energy firms to pay for a successor to Germany's summer experiment in all-but-free public transport, an idea opposed by his Free Democrat coalition allies.
The suggestion, floated in an interview with broadcaster ZDF, follows what was originally intended as a three-month inflation-busting offer designed to expire at the end of August.
"I think we need a successor to the 9 euro (a month) ticket," Social Democrat President Lars Klingbeil said. "It worked: many switched to public local transport and they felt the difference in their pockets."
Finance Minister Christian Lindner, whose pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) pitch themselves as the rigorous guardians of budget probity in their coalition with the Social Democrats and the Greens, says there is no money to continue Germany-wide public local transport for 9 euros a month.
Polls show that the offer, which makes it almost free to cross Germany from one end to the other, albeit slowly, is immensely popular. Both the SPD and FDP are stuggling in polls and could use wins to show their very different voter bases.
With the 9-euro-ticket due to end in a week, calls have been growing for a successor programme. The SPD and the Greens are both in favour, leaving the FDP, the smallest coalition partner, in an awkward outsider position.
At the weekend, Lindner said continuing the programme next year would cost 14 billion euros, money "which would be missing from education and infrastructure". Instead, he said, people would welcome simplified transport tariff structures.
He has also said windfall taxes, like those Klingbeil suggested could be imposed on energy companies benefiting from high fuel prices, would undermine confidence in the justice of the tax system.
Klingbeil said the SPD would try to persuade its junior partner of the merits of a windfall tax.