Germany’s future mobility commission slow to get started

While Germany’s coal exit commission has already started its work, the commission tasked with finding a concept for the future of mobility in the country still lies in a “summer slumber,” Kerstin Schwenn writes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germany’s government coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD) promised to set up a commission composed of industry representatives, environmentalists, municipalities, and other stakeholders to make progress on the transport sector’s climate record and master the technological shift in the automotive sector, she writes. “It’s high time to start if the commission wants to present its first recommendations by early 2019 as planned,” Schwenning writes, adding that a fight over competencies between the SPD-led environment ministry and the conservative-led transport ministry has slowed down the commission’s appointment. Chancellor Merkel said that transport minister Andreas Scheuer will be responsible for the body, and he plans to start its work in August, Schwenn says.

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