Germany's fuel crisis deepens as government debates relief amid coalition gridlock

On a September morning in Berlin, drivers pulled up to gas pumps and watched the numbers climb. E10 gasoline sat at €2.25 per liter when the stations opened. At noon, as they do every day in Germany, prices jumped by about twenty cents. By afternoon, at a highway station in southern Berlin, Super Plus had reached €3.03 per liter—a threshold that felt less like a price and more like a breaking point.

For people in cities, the math was abstract. They could take the U-Bahn. But for the millions living in rural areas and small towns, a car was not a luxury—it was the only way to work, to school, to anywhere. The anger was real and spreading. Across the border, the picture was starkly different. On September 7, filling a sixty-liter tank with E10 in the Czech Republic or Poland cost roughly thirty-one euros less than in Germany. Luxembourg offered a twenty-eight-euro advantage. Austria, twenty-five. The Federal Statistical Office had done the math. Of Germany's nine neighboring countries, seven sold gasoline cheaper, and six undercut diesel prices. Only the Netherlands and Denmark charged more.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz heard the frustration. "Many people who need their cars every day have reached their breaking point," he said on Tuesday at an event hosted by the German Foreign Trade Association in Berlin. "I believe we must take action." But when pressed on specifics, Merz offered only a promise: a proposal would come "very soon." The exact measures, he said, remained undetermined. The government was in dialogue with itself and the states. That was all he could say.

The government's own spokesperson, Steffen Meyer, had already tried to deflect blame. The price spikes, he argued, were not the federal government's doing. They stemmed from the escalating Middle East conflict, attacks on oil pipelines, and blockaded shipping lanes. It was a geopolitical problem, not a policy failure. Yet the ADAC automobile club and industry observers pointed to a different culprit: Germany's own tax structure. While crude oil prices remained below historical peaks, E10 gasoline had never been more expensive. Herbert Rabl, who represents gas station owners, was blunt about what he saw at the pumps. "They're raking it in," he told the Rheinische Post. "The oil companies aren't cutting into their profit margins at all." This was not a new complaint. It had circulated in political circles for years. But the federal government remained fractured on whether anything could actually be done.

The coalition faced a bind. The CDU/CSU conservatives and the SPD socialists governed together, but the state coffers were empty. Any major spending would require historically high levels of new debt. The government had tried relief before. In spring, after the Iran war erupted, it introduced a temporary fuel rebate—reducing energy taxes on gasoline and diesel from May through June. The measure was expected to lower prices by about seventeen cents per liter. Federal Economy Minister Katherina Reiche acknowledged the move on television: "We had a fuel rebate; we subsidized prices." But she was clear it would not happen again. "Together, we in the coalition have decided that we don't have the financial scope for that at the moment."

The two coalition partners now proposed competing visions. The conservatives explored tax relief for commuters or direct payments to low-income earners—targeted help rather than broad intervention. The SPD wanted something bolder: a government-imposed price cap at the pump, financed partly through an excess profit tax on energy companies, with a temporary cut to energy taxes. They wanted immediate relief visible to every driver. The disagreement mattered because time was running out. Regional elections in two states were scheduled for September 20. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, SPD Premier Manuela Schwesig was fighting to hold ground against the far-right Alternative for Germany, which polled at thirty-eight percent to the SPD's thirty-four. The AfD's platform was simple: abolish the CO₂ tax on fossil fuels, cut the energy tax to the European minimum, and reduce the value-added tax on fuel from nineteen percent to seven. It was a direct answer to the crisis at the pump, and voters were listening.

Schwesig herself had called for a price cap paired with an excess profit tax, the model Luxembourg had adopted. She criticized the chancellor's hesitation. "The chancellor is just allowing this to drag on, and that is causing frustration." The SPD-led Finance Ministry was pushing the idea beyond Germany's borders. Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil planned to advocate strongly for an excess profits tax at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin on Friday. Berlin officials noted that Spain and Poland supported the approach. An excess profit tax, they argued, would redirect the windfall gains oil companies were harvesting from the crisis—the price hikes they imposed on consumers—toward relief for those hit hardest. Whether the coalition could move before the elections, whether Brussels would act, whether drivers would see relief before the next crisis: these remained open questions. For now, the pumps kept their rhythm. Noon came. Prices rose. Drivers paid.