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full screen Energy and Food Minister Ebba Busch (KD). Archive image. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT
Energy and Industry Minister Ebba Busch (KD) had to endure massive criticism for the government’s handling of the electricity subsidy. Today she was asked out at KU.
– The issue has been just as complex and miserable as I thought.
In the 2022 election campaign, KD leader Ebba Busch and the other Tidö parties promised that a high-cost protection against high electricity prices for both households and businesses would be in place on November 1 of the same year.
There was no high-cost protection. And the companies could not start applying for their support until May 30, 2023.
The process was fraught with difficulties. And Ebba Busch had to defend herself in a number of interviews. When she was asked on Thursday about the government’s handling of the support for the companies in particular, she said that it could have been at most a week faster to get the proposal in place.
– There were road choices that could have been taken to speed things up by days or up to a work week, says Busch.
– I think it can be costly to be humble like this in retrospect – given that we now have perfect information.
But she doesn’t want to say she underestimated how complicated the issue was.
– It has been just as complex and miserable as I thought it would be.
– Since then, there has been a huge war of words around this with what was promised in the election campaign. I can show in black and white exactly what was promised. I emphasized that this does not mean that people will be able to count on having the money in their account before Christmas. We couldn’t promise a date, says Ebba Busch.