A good six months after the announcement, more than three million students and technical colleges will be able to apply for the long-awaited energy price lump sum of 200 euros from this Wednesday. This should be possible on the "Einmalzahlung200.de" application platform set up by the federal and state governments specifically for this purpose. The money is intended to relieve the sharp rise in energy prices.

The application platform had been tested in recent weeks in a pilot test with several universities, according to Federal Minister of Education Bettina Stark-Watzinger successfully. More than 12,000 applicants would already have the 200 euros in their account, the FDP politician told the "Bild am Sonntag" and added: "On Wednesday, the application for all students and technical students starts." According to the Digital Ministry of Saxony-Anhalt, which was in charge of setting up the platform, the application took an average of three minutes during the test phase.

Special payment agreed at the beginning of September

Around 3.5 million students and technical school pupils who were enrolled at a university or in a technical college as of 1 December 2022 are entitled to the money. The prerequisite is a domicile or "habitual residence" in Germany. At technical schools, for example, educators, technicians or business economists are trained. The energy price lump sum should neither be taxed nor offset against any social benefits.

The special payment had already been agreed by the traffic light coalition at the beginning of September last year. At that time there was talk of a quick and unbureaucratic payment. However, this proved to be difficult. A quick transfer of the 200 euros was slowed down, among other things, because the account data of all affected students and technical students were not centrally available.

In addition, the federal and state governments have repeatedly come into conflict in an attempt to build an application platform on which those affected can identify themselves securely and unambiguously and on which personal and account data held by educational institutions are merged at the same time. It was about data protection, responsibilities and technical details. Student representatives and the opposition in the Bundestag had criticized the slow procedure.

Recently, there was also criticism that all those affected must create a user account with the federal government, a so-called BundID account, in order to clearly identify themselves when applying. In the meantime, it has been clarified that this does not necessarily require the online function of the identity card or an "Elster certificate", as used for the online tax return, but that a simple BundID account with user name and password can also be created.

According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior on Monday, a good 700,000 people had acquired such an ID by the beginning of the week. However, it is unclear how many of them are students or technical school students who have registered only because of the energy price lump sum. The account can be used by any citizen also for other administrative services.