Germans criticized Olaf Scholz for the sharp rise in düner prices. There are calls for a price cap on the hugely popular street food. In some cities, duners now cost 10 EUR compared to 4 EUR just two years ago.
The rising price of a döner kebab has led to calls for a government subsidy program to keep the inflation-hit dish affordable, The Guardian reports.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz even posted on social media an explanation that the rise in prices was partly due to rising wages and energy costs. “It's amazing that everywhere I go, young people ask me if there should be a price cap on doners,” said Scholz.
The far-left Die Linke party wants to present a proposal to parliament to introduce a price cap on duners to control high rents.
The party recommends a price cap of €4.90 and €2.90 for young people, especially from low-income families. This means that every family can get daily döner vouchers.
Die Linke estimates that around 400,000 dürner are eaten daily in Berlin alone, and such a subsidy program would cost more than €4 billion a year.
Hannah Steinmüller, a member of parliament from the Green Party, who usually calls on people to give up meat, raised the issue in parliament earlier this year: “For young people now, it is as important a question as where they go, after they leave home".
At one event, a young man of Turkish origin approached Scholz and said: “I pay 8 euros.“ Talk to Putin, I want to pay 4 euros."
Chancellor rules out price controls as “not working” in a free market economy. Instead, he praised “the good work of the European Central Bank” to reduce inflation.
Among the responses on social networks, some young people called for the return of Angela Merkel.
Denise, a donut seller at a kiosk near Berlin's Friedrichstrasse station, where the price has risen from €3.90 to €7 in just over two years, said she doesn't see the price coming down anytime soon. “We were forced to raise the price due to the sharp increase in rent, energy and food prices. People talk to us about “dunerflation” all the time, it's like we're fooling them, but it's completely out of our control,'' says Denise.