German Greens Demand Price Controls on Ice Cream Because Their Own Policies Have Made it Unaffordable
Marianne Burkert-Eulitz, Green member of the Berlin House of Representatives (she’s fighting for cheap ice cream for poor families)
In 2004, Germany’s then-Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin famously claimed in an interview that the renewable energy surcharge under the country’s vaunted Energiewende (‘energy transition’) would cost households “only around one euro per month, the price of a scoop of ice cream”. Fast forward to 2025, and the bitter irony is unmistakable: the Green Party, architects of Germany’s catastrophic climate policies, on Monday demanded price controls on ice cream.
For the virtue-signallers rife within the Green Party, this is so that poor children can afford the very treat that has become a luxury due to the soaring energy costs the party’s policies have inflicted. This absurd twist encapsulates the ideological fervour and economic illiteracy of Europe’s climate cultists, whose obsession with Net Zero has plunged the continent into an energy and cost-of-living crisis.
While the United States, under President Trump’s second term, embraces an energy counter-revolution rooted in pragmatism, Europe’s ruling elites cling to their green dogma, stigmatizing dissent as “far right” and ignoring the material needs of their struggling citizens. The gulf between the virtue-signalling ruling class and the working and middle classes is not just tragic — it is a policy disaster of historic proportions.
The Ice Cream Irony: Green Policies and Economic Illiteracy
The Green Party’s proposal to cap ice cream prices at 50 cents for poor children is a masterclass in unintended comedy. Two decades ago, Trittin’s ‘scoop of ice cream’ analogy was meant to downplay the cost of Germany’s renewable energy transition. Yet, the Energiewende has become a case study in policy failure, with costs spiralling far beyond Trittin’s scoop of ice-cream per household.
By 2020, Germany had spent over €500 billion on its green agenda, transforming it into one of the most expensive electricity markets in the world. Household electricity prices are now among the highest in Europe and the world, with rates in 2025 averaging nearly 40 cents per kilowatt-hour, double those in countries like the US.
Energy-intensive industries, from chemical manufacturers to steel producers, are fleeing Germany for jurisdictions with cheaper, more reliable energy, leaving behind job losses and economic stagnation. The Energiewende has contributed to Germany’s GDP shrinking in real terms and rapid de-industrialisation, a stark contrast to the promises of ‘green growth’.
According to a recent analysis by credit insurer Allianz Trade, the country is bracing for a continued surge in major insolvencies throughout 2025 and even 2026. This all comes after a disastrous 2024, which saw a record-breaking number of bankruptcies in the country. Allianz Trade forecasts an overall increase of 11% in corporate insolvencies in Germany this year, reaching approximately 24,400 cases. A further 3% rise to 25,050 cases is anticipated for 2026. Over 200,000 jobs are estimated at risk across Germany due to these insolvencies. High energy prices, red tape, high interest rates and a shaky trade outlook are key causal factors.
Now, the same Green Party that championed drastic ‘decarbonisation’ policies based on solar and wind energy wants to impose price controls on ice cream to make it affordable for the poor — whose poverty has been exacerbated by the very energy costs the Greens helped inflate. This proposal betrays a stunning ignorance of basic economics. Price controls distort markets, discourage production and lead to shortages. If ice cream vendors cannot cover their costs — already strained by high energy prices and supply chain disruptions — they will simply stop selling or pass losses elsewhere, further eroding small businesses.
The Greens’ fixation on symbolic gestures, like cheap ice cream, ignores the root cause: their own policies that have made energy, and thus everything from food to manufacturing, prohibitively expensive. This is not compassion; it is a suicidal empathy. The Energiewende’s failures extend beyond economics. Germany’s aggressive push for wind and solar, coupled with the phase-out of nuclear and coal plants, has destabilised its grid. Rolling blackouts – once unthinkable in an industrial powerhouse – are now a risk. California and South Australia provide examples where similar green policies have led to unreliable energy systems.
The intermittency of renewables — when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow — requires expensive backup systems or imports of fossil fuels, undermining the very carbon reductions the Greens claim to champion. Yet, dissenters like Bjorn Lomborg or Michael Shellenberger, who point out these inconvenient truths, are dismissed as heretics by the climate cult. The Greens’ refusal to engage with evidence, coupled with their latest ice cream stunt, reveals a movement more interested in moral posturing than practical solutions.
The Ruling Class Disconnect: Virtue Signalling vs Material Needs
This disconnect is compounded by the elites’ refusal to acknowledge the failures of their broader policy agenda. Mass immigration of unskilled labour, particularly in Germany and France, has strained public services and social cohesion, yet criticism is branded as ‘far Right’ extremism. The war in Ukraine, supported by European governments, has exacerbated energy shortages by disrupting affordable Russian gas supplies, further driving up costs. Yet, Germany’s and France’s ruling coalitions vilify populist movements — such as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) or Marine Le Pen’s National Rally — that dare to question these policies. These nationalist-populist parties, far from being the caricatured ‘extremists’ of media portrayals, articulate the legitimate grievances of citizens crushed by high energy prices, stagnant wages and cultural dislocation.
The ruling elites’ strategy is clear: stigmatise dissent to maintain power. By labelling critics of green policies, mass immigration or unending war as ‘far Right’, they deflect attention from their own failures. In Germany, the AfD’s rising popularity reflects public frustration partly with the Energiewende’s costs and the Government’s refusal to prioritise affordable energy. In France, Macron’s coalition has resorted to electoral manoeuvres to block Le Pen’s party, despite its growing support among voters fed up with economic hardship and unchecked immigration. This refusal to engage with populist concerns ensures that Europe remains trapped in a cycle of policy failure, with no course correction in sight.
Nevertheless, as much as it tried in 2024, the Brussels liberal-globalist establishment has not been able to cancel the surging European Right-wing parties. One aspect of this is represented by the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament. The group emerged as the third largest bloc within the EU parliament. It is headed by leaders of the nationalist-conservative parties like Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from France’s National Rally; Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary (Fidesz); Dutch PVV’s Geert Wilders; Italian Lega’s Mateo Salvini; Herbert Kickl, leader of Austria’s Freedom Party; Santiago Abascal (Vox, Spain); and Andre Ventura (Chega, Portugal).
The group will lead negotiations on the EU’s new climate target, MEPs and parliament officials, a role that could derail the bloc’s objective to reduce greenhouse emissions by 90% by 2040. To the shock and dismay of the Left-centre ‘uniparty’ leadership that has called all the shots in Europe’s key policies for decades, the Patriots for Europe group will “break [the] cordon sanitaire to seize climate file in European Parliament”. In the way the EU parliament works, the Patriots will have “increasing influence over the EU’s climate policy as rapporteurs are ultimately responsible for recommending a political line on the file”.
The Patriots group posted on X on July 8th that it “will continue to lead the call for a genuine overhaul of EU climate policy. We invite all political groups that truly stand for economic reason, energy security, and democratic legitimacy to join us.” It led its manifesto as follows: “The Patriots of Europe Group, in charge of the report on the EU Climate Law, reaffirm its clear stance: Europe needs a complete reset of the Green Deal – not cosmetic adjustment or political wish washing.”
On achieving its significant role in the EU parliament, Victor Orban – sharing the stage with other leading nationalists including Dutch Geert Wilders, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and former Czech premier Andrej Babis – said: “Yesterday we were the heretics. Today we are the mainstream. … We are the future.”
Both Orban and Le Pen hailed President Trump’s “tornado” in the US as showing the way forward for the EU, which the parties had condemned in a joint statement as riven with “climate fanaticism”, “illegal immigration” and “excessive regulation”. France24 quoted Le Pen: “We’re facing a truly global tipping point. Hurricane Trump is sweeping across the United States. … For its part, the European Union seems to be in a state of shock.”
The Road Ahead: A Reckoning for Europe
In a sign of the state of the faltering establishment parties, EU Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen faced intense scrutiny despite the limited time allotted for a non-confidence vote in the EU parliament. The vote arose out of a series of allegations including text messages privately with the boss of vaccine maker Pfizer for a $35 billion contract (which have been ‘lost’ from her phone), misuse of EU funds and interference in elections in Germany and Romania. While she will survive the censure motion, her prestige will take a severe toll as a non-elected leader of the EU Commission and a member of the faltering German ruling coalition.
Europe’s green folly, epitomised by the Energiewende and the ice cream price control farce, is a cautionary tale of what happens when ideology overrides reason. The incisive comments by Eugyppius, a German commentator on Substack, are inimitably appropriate: “The relentless and highly concentrated stupidity of our rulers is a very great weight to bear. Every day they devise some fantastic new and heretofore inconceivable retardation.”
The Green Party’s policies have not ushered in an ‘Age of Aquarius’ but a grim era of energy poverty, industrial decline, and economic stagnation. The ruling elites’ refusal to heed the lessons of Germany’s €500 billion experiment — or the grid instability in California and South Australia — reflects a dangerous hubris. Their dismissal of populist movements as ‘far Right’ only deepens the divide between the governing class and the governed, risking social unrest as the cost-of-living crisis worsens.
Europe must abandon its dogmatic commitment to Net Zero and embrace a pragmatic energy mix that includes fossil fuels and nuclear power, and, only when economically viable without subsidies, renewables. Governments must prioritise the material needs of their citizens — affordable energy, secure jobs and social cohesion — over the applause of globalist elites (primarily themselves). The US’s energy counter-revolution offers a model: policies that harness domestic energy resources, foster innovation and reject ideological extremism.
Until Europe’s leaders confront the stupendous idiocy of their current course, the tragedy of the Energiewende will continue to unfold, leaving the middle and working classes to pay the price — not just for a scoop of ice cream, but for the very basics of modern life.
This article was first published in The Daily Sceptic (https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/13/german-greens-demand-price-controls-on-ice-cream-because-their-own-policies-have-made-it-unaffordable/)