Left Party says coal commission lacks eastern German representatives

The planned commission that will prepare the end of coal-fired power production in Germany does not include enough representatives from eastern Germany, the Left Party was quoted as saying in an article written by the news agency dpa and carried by the Berliner Morgenpost. “It doesn’t help if the energy transition and the coal exit are perceived as imposed decisions in the eastern German regions,” said the party’s energy policy spokesman, Lorenz Gösta Beutin. Difficult political decisions like those facing the eastern coal region of Lusatia “need to give special attention to the eastern German concerns and interests, which is best done by people who have experienced the German reunification” and the upheavals it caused in the east, he said. Two of the commission’s leaders - former Saxony state premier Stanislaw Tillich, a conservative, and former Brandenburg state premier Matthias Platzeck, a social democrat - are from eastern Germany, but the region is underrepresented in the rest of the commission, the article says.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheets on Coal in Germany and on Germany’s coal exit commission for background.