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Right now, the Europeans have no time to worry, the inflation crisis and the energy crisis have already left them devastated. In Germany, the German government and government-owned energy suppliers decided to charge consumers a gas surcharge in response to a shortage of natural gas, sparking public dissatisfaction. On the 18th, the German government came up with a trick to appease the people.

On the 18th, German Chancellor Scholz held a press conference to announce that Germany would temporarily reduce the value-added tax rate on natural gas from 19% to 7%.

German Chancellor Scholz: The government has decided to temporarily reduce the value-added tax on natural gas consumption to 7%. As long as the natural gas surcharge continues to be levied, this tax rate will remain unchanged, which means it will last until March 31, 2024. With this measure, we are able to ease the burden on gas consumers enough to cover the additional burden of imposing a surcharge.

Just the day before, when Scholz attended an event in Neu Lupin outside Berlin, he was met with a large number of protests.

The reason people are so outraged is that earlier this week, German energy suppliers announced the exact amount of a gas surcharge that from October 1 this year, all natural gas users in Germany will have to pay more for each kilowatt-hour of gas. Pay a fee of 2.419 euro cents. At this cost, the annual cost of living for a family of four will increase by about 480 euros, or about 3,300 yuan. The fee was passed by the German federal government earlier this month to help gas suppliers cope with rising gas prices.

At present, about half of the apartments in Germany use gas for heating, and one-third of enterprises use natural gas as the main energy source. Economists worry that the imposition of natural gas surcharges will not only significantly push up inflation in Germany and increase the living burden of residents, but also further reduce the competitiveness of German industry.

In the context of the crisis of soaring prices and energy shortages, the price of natural gas will continue to rise. This wave of operations immediately aroused criticism from the outside world. Germany's Left Party criticised the government's unilateral imposition of the burden on consumers as "completely wrong" and called on people to take to the streets to protest the gas surcharge.

The matter of charging natural gas surcharges has also sparked widespread discussion on the Internet, with many netizens expressing their anger. "It's so outrageous that customers are paying for bad policies. At the same time, energy companies are making huge profits."

"There is no gas crisis at all. Hungary is buying extra gas from Russia and everything is fine there. We Germans are boycotting the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline for ideological reasons and are about to become destitute. This is not gas Crisis, it's a government crisis!"

According to the law, this new surcharge is also subject to value-added tax. In the face of opposition, the German government initially sought to reduce the value-added tax rate for the surcharge to 0%, but such a plan was rejected by the EU. As a result, the German government lowered the overall value-added tax rate for natural gas from the usual 19% to a preferential rate of 7%, hoping to ease the burden on consumers in this way.