Opposition and environmental NGOs outraged over coal exit commission leadership

The Green Party and environmental NGOs have strongly criticised the government’s choice of leadership for the coal exit commission, Thorsten Knuf reports for Frankfurter Rundschau. The nomination of the former mining state premiers Matthias Platzeck, a Social Democrat, and Stanislaw Tillich, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, suggests the government has “already given up on climate protection before the launch of the commission,” Green head Annalena Baebrock told the newspaper. WWF climate expert Michael Schäfer said both men were proponents of a “coal policy that cannot be reconciled with German and international climate targets.”

For more details, read the freshly updated article Germany gears up for official talks on coal phase-out.