On Thursday 10 August, the European Commission announced that it had authorised a German aid scheme worth €6.5 billion to provide partial compensation to energy-intensive companies exposed to international competition.
With this scheme, Germany wants to “prevent carbon leakage”, i.e. the relocation of these large companies that could be caused by the rise in fuel prices as a result of the German EU Emissions Trading Scheme (the ‘German ETS for fuels’) to countries with less...