Status: 03/29/2023 08:37 am
While the traffic light parties hail the results of their marathon deliberations as long-term reform, the opposition and environmental groups are shocked. You see the resolutions as a clear step backwards in climate protection.
Ultimately, it took two and a half days, rather than a few hours as planned, for the traffic light coalition to reach agreement on contentious issues such as the Climate Protection Act and infrastructure expansion. The governing parties praise the decisions taken as innovative, but many of the commitments also provoke strong criticism.
Environmentalists, in particular, are sounding the alarm in view of the partially rerouted traffic light parts. German Environmental Aid described the federal government as an “anti-climate protection coalition” that announced “hard-to-count terror news”. Federal managing director Jürgen Resch criticized above all “believe it or not 144 accelerated road construction projects and the de facto planned equal treatment of combustion engine cars with electric vehicles”.
“Climate will continue to be pushed against the wall”
The results of the Berlin Marathon consultations also received a negative response from the nature conservation association NABU and Greenpeace. For both organizations, the “reform of the climate protection law” announced in the words of the traffic light coalition is also in focus. According to the president of NABU, Jörg-Andreas Krüger, this is accompanied by a softening of the sector’s targets.
These goals aim to limit the emission of harmful greenhouse gases in individual areas, such as transport, construction or agriculture. If values are exceeded in one or more sectors, the federal government must counter with emergency programs. In the future, however, the federal government will only have to intervene if the threshold values are exceeded twice in a row – across all sectors as a whole. Exceeding threshold values in one sector can therefore in the future be compensated for by falling below values in another sector.
Greenpeace executive director Martin Kaiser warned the dpa news agency that the climate protection program risks being “gutted” in this way. Even with “climate-damaging motorway projects”, which “will be paved across the country at an accelerated pace”, “the climate is being pushed more and more to the wall”.
“Germany remains dependent on automobility”
But there is also a positive response to traffic light commitments. More money for the expansion of the rail network, in the future financed, among other things, by revenue from truck tolls – this goes down well with the “Allianz pro Schiene” alliance. “Finally, the compulsion to invest truck toll revenue on federal highways has been abolished. Now you can invest in green alternatives, that’s a big step forward,” said managing director Dirk Flege.
The German Association of Cities and Municipalities also endorses the promised acceleration in the expansion of some motorway sections. “Germany will still be dependent on automobility for a long time to come. It will take decades to expand the rail network – including the European one – so that the volume of rail transport can increase very significantly”, said CEO Gerd Landsberg in the “Post Rheinische”. Therefore, it is right to invest in road construction as well.
“Carrying out conflicts on behalf of society”
The Greens have long resisted fast-track highway projects in the fight for a traffic light deal. Even later, Federal Economy Minister Robert Habeck emphasized: “This was not a wish of the Greens.” Ultimately though, it is important that the issues have been resolved.
The president of the Green Party, Ricarda Lang, also gave an overall positive evaluation of the commission meeting in the daily topics. The semaphore carries out “conflicts on behalf of society”. But “in the end, we are a coalition” that “finally gets down to business, that takes action and also addresses structural reforms.”
“True paradigm shift” enabled
Like Lang, SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil recalled “a total of two and a half good days” in the tagesthemen interview. And it is “two and a half days that will change the country in the coming decades” and that can guarantee that Germany “continues to be a strong country”.
In the eyes of FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr, the “comprehensive modernization and acceleration package” will be innovative and allow for a “true paradigm shift”. Party leader Christian Lindner also spoke of “real progress” and certified the federal government’s “capacity to act and willingness to shape things”.
CDU is “in parts dazed”
It sounds very different from opposition parties. Already on Tuesday night, CDU leader Friedrich Merz spoke of a “real government crisis” and party deputy Andreas Jung was “partially stunned” on the ARD morning show about the lack of responses to political issues. Jung criticized the fact that there are no resolutions on the federal budget or on funding basic child safety. He also accused the traffic light of softening the “response to the problem of climate protection” with the change in the treatment of the sector’s targets.
Left Party accuses Scholz of “weak leadership”.
For the leader of the Left parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartsch, at the end of the coalition committee sometimes there are only “nebulous announcements”, which is a “shameful” result for the traffic light parties and reveals the “continuing weakness in leadership” of the Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The leaders of the AfD parliamentary groups, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, described the results of the coalition consultations as “bad”. Most of all, the AfD leadership criticized the fact that the planned ban on the installation of new oil and gas heating systems is still not ruled out. The federal government wants to impose that, from 2024, all newly installed heating systems are operated with 65% renewable energy. There must be social compensation for installing greener heating systems.
Innovative or horror – reactions to traffic light decisions
Kai Küstner, ARD Berlin, March 29, 2023 08:01 am