Federal Finance Minister Klingbeil and European colleagues are calling for an EU-wide excess profits tax

In view of the continued high fuel prices at gas stations, Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) and five European colleagues are launching another push for an excess profits tax. “We must address the issue of high energy prices by discussing an EU-wide framework to tax excess profits,” the “Spiegel” quoted on Saturday from a letter from the six ministers to the finance minister of Ireland, which holds the EU Council Presidency.

The issue should be put on the agenda at the meeting of EU finance ministers in Ireland in mid-September, they demanded. Klingbeil and his counterparts from Austria, Italy, Portugal and Spain have been campaigning for an excess profits tax in the EU for months. This was temporarily introduced in 2022 as an emergency response to high energy prices as a result of the war in Ukraine; Energy companies had to pay them for extraordinary profits.

Several major oil companies published their quarterly financial statements in July. According to the aid organization Oxfam, the profits of the six largest fossil energy companies - BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies - rose to a total of almost 40 billion euros from April to June. In 2026 as a whole, they will amount to 147 billion euros. Oxfam is calling for a “general and permanent excess profits tax of at least 50 percent” on profits that exceed a return of ten percent.