Status: 03/29/2023 08:37 a.m
While the traffic light parties praise the results of their marathon deliberations as a long-term reform, the opposition and environmental groups are appalled. You see the resolutions as a clear step backwards in climate protection.
It ultimately took two and a half days instead of a few hours as planned for the traffic light coalition to come to an agreement on contentious issues such as the Climate Protection Act and the expansion of infrastructure. The governing parties praise the decisions taken as groundbreaking, but many of the compromises also provoke strong criticism.
Environmentalists in particular are sounding the alarm in view of the partly new course of the traffic light parties. The German Environmental Aid described the federal government as an “anti-climate protection coalition” which had announced “hardly countable horror news”. Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch criticized above all the “believe it or not 144 accelerated motorway construction projects and the planned de facto equal treatment of combustion engine cars with electric vehicles”.
“Climate will continue to be driven once morest 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 NABU President Jörg-Andreas Krüger, this is accompanied by a softening of the sector targets.
These goals are intended to limit the emission of harmful greenhouse gases in individual areas such as transport, construction or agriculture. If the values are exceeded in one or more sectors, the federal government must take countermeasures with emergency programs. In the future, however, the federal government will only have to intervene if the limit values are exceeded twice in a row – in all sectors as a whole. Exceeding the limit values in one sector can thus in future be compensated for by falling below the values in another sector.
The executive director of Greenpeace, Martin Kaiser, warned the dpa news agency that the climate protection program was in danger of being “gutted” in this way. Even with the “climate-damaging motorway projects”, which “are to be paved through the country at an accelerated rate”, “the climate is being driven further into the wall”.
“Germany remains dependent on automobility”
But there is also a positive response to the traffic light compromises. More money for the expansion of the rail network, in future financed among other things by revenue from truck tolls – that goes down well with the “Allianz pro Schiene” alliance. “Finally, the compulsion to invest the truck toll revenue in federal trunk roads has been abolished. Now you can invest in environmentally friendly alternatives, that’s a huge step forward,” said Managing Director Dirk Flege.
The German Association of Towns and Municipalities also approves of the promised acceleration in the expansion of certain motorway sections. “Germany will still be dependent on automobility for a very long time. It will take decades to expand the rail network – including the European one – in such a way that the volume of rail transport can increase very significantly,” said CEO Gerd Landsberg in the “Rheinische Post”. It is therefore right to also invest in road construction.
“Carry out conflicts on behalf of society”
The Greens had long resisted the accelerated motorway projects in the struggle for a traffic light agreement. Even followingwards, Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck emphasized: “That was not a wish of the Greens.” Ultimately, however, it is important that the problems have been solved.
The Green Party leader Ricarda Lang also moved into the daily topics overall a positive assessment of the committee meeting. The traffic light carries out “conflicts on behalf of society”. But “in the end we are a coalition” that “ultimately gets down to business, that takes action and also tackles structural reforms.”
“True paradigm shift” enabled
Like Lang, the chairman of the SPD, Lars Klingbeil, also looked at the daily topics interview to “a total of two and a half good days”. And it is “two and a half days that will change the country in the coming decades” and that might ensure that Germany “remains a strong country”.
In the eyes of FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr, the “comprehensive modernization and acceleration package” will be groundbreaking and enable a “true paradigm shift”. Party leader Christian Lindner also spoke of “real breakthroughs” and certified the federal government’s “ability to act and the will to shape things”.
CDU is “in parts stunned”
It sounds very different from the opposition parties. As early as Tuesday evening, CDU leader Friedrich Merz spoke of a “real government crisis” and party vice-president Andreas Jung showed up in the ARD morning magazine “partially stunned” by what he saw as the lack of answers to political issues. Jung criticized that there were no resolutions on the federal budget or on the financing of basic child security. He also accused the traffic light of softening the “answer to the problem of climate protection” with the changed handling of the sector targets.
Left Party accuses Scholz of “weak leadership”.
For the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party, Dietmar Bartsch, at the end of the coalition committee there are sometimes only “nebulous announcements”, which is a “disgraceful” result for the traffic light parties and reveals the “continued weakness in leadership” of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The parliamentary group leaders of the AfD, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, described the results of the coalition consultations as “poor”. Above all, the AfD leadership criticized the fact that the planned ban on the installation of new oil and gas heating systems is not yet off the table. The federal government wants to enforce that from 2024 every newly installed heating system should be operated with 65 percent renewable energies. There should be social compensation for the installation of more climate-friendly heating systems.
Groundbreaking or horror – reactions to the traffic light decisions
Kai Küstner, ARD Berlin, March 29, 2023 08:01 a.m
