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DG Competition's administrative file in case COMP/SA.103791 - Germany - Recapitalisation of Uniper SE. Background: Last autumn, the German government injected €8 billion in capital, increasing the German state's stake in Uniper to around 99%. The Federal Republic is buying the remaining share of the former majority shareholder Fortum from the Finnish energy group for 480 million euros. In this context, the European Commission carried out an examination of the legality of state aid law. The documents I requested were produced in this context. Uniper is one of the most important gas importers in Germany. The company was heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies. In recent months, the state monopolist Gazprom has pumped less and less of the fuel via the all-important Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline - in retaliation for sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine. At first, 40 percent of the agreed volumes were still pumped to Germany, then 20 percent. Finally, Gazprom stopped deliveries completely. The company had to buy the natural gas on the energy exchanges at short notice. There, prices have skyrocketed to unprecedented heights because of the Ukraine war. Gas for delivery in October currently costs 209 euros per megawatt hour. A year ago it was 33 euros. Uniper cannot pass on these high purchase prices to its customers - municipal utilities and industrial companies - because there are long-term supply contracts in which prices have been set that are many times lower than the current price level. Uniper has therefore incurred gigantic losses of several million euros a day. If the German government had not taken over Uniper, the group would have become insolvent within a very short time. This would most likely have meant that the company would no longer have been able to buy natural gas because no one would have agreed to do business with the bankrupt company. This would have triggered a chain reaction: hundreds of municipal utilities and many industrial companies would suddenly find themselves without a gas supplier. They would have to find new ways to obtain the extremely expensive gas themselves. But that would have brought municipal utilities in particular to their knees, since the municipal companies have supply contracts for up to two years with favourable fixed conditions for about a quarter of their customers. It should therefore be indisputable that there is a great public interest in transparency regarding the events surrounding this decision. I am therefore of the opinion that the public interest overrides any grounds for exclusion.