Climate and environment only side issue for Germany’s new grand coalition – report

In their third grand coalition, Germany’s governing parties CDU/CSU and SPD are showing less interest in environmental protection than ever before, Veit Medick, Ralf Neukirch, Michael Sauga and Gerald Traufetter write in Der Spiegel. The coalition agreement has been a “document of cowardice” as it scraps the 2020 climate target and postpones the coal exit indefinitely, and the parties’ protection of carmakers points in a similar direction, the authors say. Fears among voters over the digital revolution, high migration levels and growing inequality have made climate protection and other environmental concerns side issues, they write. The coalition’s plan to set up commissions for the coal exit and emissions reduction in the transport and heating sectors is based on a “completely unrealistic schedule”, says Felix Matthes of the Institute for Applied Ecolocy (Öko-Institut), meaning that the parties will already be in election mode again once the commissions are ready to advise lawmakers.

Read the article in German here.

Find more information in the CLEW dossier The next German government and the energy transition.