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Germany: Bundestag and Bundesrat remain divided over FITS issue

The mediation committee between the German Bundestag and the Bundesrat for solar promotion - set up to find a compromise regarding the issue of feed-in tariffs (FITs) - failed to reach a consensus after meeting for the first time yesterday.

The committee plans to meet again on July 5. Image: Bundesrat.

As a result, the committee has set up another meeting, scheduled for July 5 in the hope that they can reach a decision in the meantime. According to Reuters, some members of the committee wanted to shift the decision until the autumn, however there was not enough of a majority in favor of doing this.

Bavaria also considered waiting until autumn to make a decision, which would have left the photovoltaics industry and investors further in limbo. Two rounds of voting within the committee led to no concrete results or decisions, however. Thereafter was the decision made to form a working group that will look for a compromise situation.

Hamburg was also assigned to find a solution to reformulate the law. The Bundestag representatives have however made it explicit that the final results will not be too far behind the already reached conclusions. The Bundestag had decided at the beginning of May to lower the feed in remuneration for roof installations by an additional 16 percent and open space installations to between 11-15 percent.

Bavaria has stressed that it is holding its position to negotiate the amounts of the gradual decrease. Baden-Würtemberg has also expressed its desire to negotiate.  Open spaces on arable land were one of the focuses brought up by the Greens in preliminary talks.  Whether this will play a role in the working group negotiations remains questionable, as open spaces are not part of the negotiations in the mediation committee.

The states are demanding a limit to the decrease of the feed-in tariffs to be set at 10 percent at the most while the CDU-FDP majority in the Bundestag is looking at 11-16 percent.

If a resolution is reached for solar promotion within the first few days of July, the regulations could still work retroactively. The Bundestag representatives and Röttgen (CDU), have expressed themselves in quite an uncompromising way, reported some participants at the meeting. They were unwilling to accept any changes on the Photovoltaic cutbacks, since a further delay of the passing of the law would only increase the disconcertion in the industry.