A few weeks ago, the city council of the Schwäbisch Hall municipality, located in the Baden-Württemberg in Germany, announced their intention to cap beer prices at 4€ per litre.
The move is part of a wider plan of revitalising the city centre, but also to help business who suffered from the anti-Covid measures as much as possible. City councillor Tilmann Finger advocated the measure the most, saying that bars need all the help they can get, having been closed for such a long period of time and then only opening under strict regulations, like restrictions on the number of clients and green pass requirements.
The idea is for customers to not pay more than 2€ for a pint or more than 4€ for a litre of beer. However, according to Numbeo, the average price for a pint in the rest of the country is 3.7€, with each German drinking about 99 litres of beer each year. The city of Schwäbisch Hall is subsidising the difference in price. Thus, if a bar is selling a pint with 3.7€, the city will pay 1.7€ so the customer only pays 2€.
The measure put in place by the Social Democratic majority (SPD) was not well received by all the members of the council, the vote being far from unanimous. According to the German news channel SWR, Mayor Daniel Bullinger, along with eight other city councillors, decided to oppose it.
Of course there are always dissenting voices – but overall I felt strongly that beer brings people together and therefore I firmly believed that this motion would pass.
Tilmann Finger
The opposing councillors rise concerns over the public health objectives, firstly to not advertise the consumption of alcohol or tobacco within the population and, secondly, still in the context of the pandemic. According to data from the German federal office of addiction issues, 7.8 million inhabitants between 18 and 64 years old consume a “risky” amount of alcohol, while 74,000 people die every year because of alcohol overconsumption. Ultimately, the measure will be carefully analysed to see if it is in breach of German general health laws.
