DSW: €200 for the students

€200 for students: Important, but not yet the end

• Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW) on the one-time payment of €200 to students in the third relief package of the German government
• DSW Secretary General Matthias Anbuhl: "An important step, but more must follow".
• Anbuhl: "The end has not yet been reached"

Berlin, 5 September 2022. Matthias Anbuhl, the Secretary General of Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW), says about the third relief package of the Federal Government as presented by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) yesterday, Sunday, 4 September 2022:

"We welcome the fact that the federal government explicitly names all of the approximately 2.9 million students in Germany as a group and wants to support them with a one-time payment of €200. After only BAföG recipients - and thus only 11 percent of students - benefited from the one-time heating allowance, this grant is now to go explicitly to all students. This is an important step; others must follow. Because the end has not yet been reached.

The payment must now reach students' accounts as quickly as possible. Especially the more than 60% of students who live on the privat housing market need the €200 as quickly as possible.

The planned electricity price brake can also help.

Students face a dramatic social hardship in this winter semester. They faced hardship financially and psychologically in the Corona pandemic - and know in view of exploding prices, they do not know how to pay electricity, gas and food in the winter.

Therefore, it is right that the coalition supports the students as a whole. Our society cannot afford students dropping out for lack of money.

The federal government should not slacking off its efforts to support students as a whole. For the 2023 summer semester, it will also be important to follow Austria's example and adjust BAföG rates to inflation and raise them, and to anchor an annual inflation adjustment in BAföG.

The states must now support the federal government's program. Financial aid for the student unions is necessary to limit an increase in rents in the student dormitories and in the price of food in the dining halls and cafeterias."  

This press release online