The German Federal Cartel Office has largely concluded its review of compliance with the abuse control provisions linked to the energy price caps introduced during the 2022/2023 energy crisis. As a result of compensation repayments and refunds by energy suppliers, approximately €200 million will be returned to the state budget.
The price control regimes for natural gas, electricity and district heating were adopted as emergency measures to shield consumers from sharply rising energy costs. Under these schemes, consumers paid a capped, government-set price for a defined consumption volume, while energy suppliers received compensation payments from public funds. To prevent misuse of this system, the legislature introduced specific abuse control rules aimed at stopping suppliers from inflating prices in order to secure higher compensation without any objective cost-based justification. Enforcement of these provisions was entrusted to the Federal Cartel Office.
According to Andreas Mundt, President of the Federal Cartel Office, concerns were identified in fewer than one third of the completed audits. In those cases, the suppliers involved were able to resolve the issues either by repaying amounts to the public treasury during the final settlement process or by reducing their advance compensation claims at an earlier stage. Overall, repayments of just under €200 million have been recorded in the audits concluded to date. The authority also noted that the large share of unobjectionable relief volumes indicates broad compliance with the applicable rules by audited suppliers.
In 2023 and 2024, the Federal Cartel Office initiated a total of 70 investigations across the natural gas, electricity and district heating sectors. The reviews covered around 14 percent of the total volume of compensation applications, which together exceeded €25 billion at the time the investigations were launched. Given the scale of the relief schemes and the thousands of applications submitted, the abuse control mechanism was designed from the outset as a random sampling system. Companies were selected for investigation based on specific anomalies in their application data. The cases concerned a wide range of market participants, including municipal utilities, regional suppliers, sales companies of large energy groups, energy discounters and providers specialising in renewable energy. To date, 61 investigations have been completed.
In many cases, proceedings were discontinued without the need for a formal decision. Some suppliers had already agreed to repay substantial sums, in certain instances amounting to tens of millions of euros. In most other cases where concerns were identified, repayments of comparable magnitude were achieved by mutual agreement. In the remaining concluded investigations, no abuse of the relief rules was established.
The Federal Cartel Office also highlighted the preventive effect of its approach. Rather than waiting for the final invoices, which must be submitted by May 2025, the authority began its audits during the ongoing application phases. This allowed energy suppliers to adapt early to the authority’s audit standards and created an “early warning” effect extending beyond the individual cases examined.
At present, nine investigations remain open against four suppliers in the natural gas and electricity sectors. Hearings and further follow-up investigations are currently underway.