Climate Organizations Win & more – 7th Dec 2023

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 7th of December twenty twenty-three A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

On Thursday the 30th climate organizations celebrated a major win at the higher administrative court in Berlin. The court ruled that two ministries will have to implement “immediate relief programs” to cut emissions.

Under the “Climate Protection Act” sectors of the government have fixed quotas of emission reductions. If they don’t achieve their quotas, they have to implement programs that will immediately fulfill them. For instance, the traffic minister refused to apply direct action programs, so climate activists filed a lawsuit in January.

In June, the government introduced an amendment that would dispose of the individual sector goals and instead only count reductions by the government as a whole. This would allow the underperforming sectors to “borrow” emission budgets from their “overperforming” colleagues, thus not forcing ministries to introduce immediate programs. The traffic minister refused to introduce the programs because the law would change if the amendment passed.

The court has now ruled that sectors are still obliged to implement these immediate relief programs to cut emissions until the law actually changes.

The government has announced it would appeal the ruling.

Talking about titans breaking the law… According to a study by the Center of Consumer Protection published on Monday the 4th, online giants such as TikTok, Meta, and Google continue disregarding new EU consumer protection regulations.

Since August twenty twenty-three it has been illegal for internet companies to use “dark patterns” to lead users into a certain direction or influence their decisions. Some of these are opt-out buttons that are nowhere to be found or clearly unappealingly colored, and ads that look like regular posts. Unsurprisingly, Meta, Google and others have yet to remove these design tricks and fulfill their legal consumer protection obligations.

Continuing in the Wild-West of the Internet, Germany, France, and Italy have thrown their political weight into stopping stricter regulation of AI in the EU. The EU was supposed to pass a law by the end of the year that would put heavy restrictions on the use of AI in the commercial and the public sector. The proposed law was meant to bring transparency in the use of AI and block certain usages completely, such as general facial recognition in public spaces. Now, France, Germany, and Italy, have apparently caved to their respective lobbies and reversed their commitment to the law.

Let’s go back to Berlin, where chancellor Scholz and president Steinmeier received Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday the 24th. They talked about the free trade agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur States Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. In the joint press conference, Scholz urged his European colleagues to employ “the greatest possible pragmatism and willingness to compromise.” The negotiations about the trade agreement have been ongoing for over twenty-three years and have not been finalized yet due to European concerns about the lack of rainforest protection.

Last week, we spoke about a satirical action demanding the ban of the right-wing nationalist party Alternative for Germany or AFD. This week, surprising corners of the political landscape raised more serious calls for a ban. Admittedly, scarce and scattered voices from the major corporations have come out in support of a party ban — even part of the conservative Christian Democratic Party. This discussion comes both amidst the uproar caused by the satirical video of the Center for Political Beauty that we talked about in our previous show, and reports of close ties of the AFD party leadership to the chief lobbyist of Mercedes Benz and Theo Müller, the head of the big Müller corporation, who has often been connected to extreme nationalists in the past. These newly uncovered ties certainly don’t look good for a company such as Mercedes, which profited heavily from wartime production and forced labor under Hitler's National Socialist regime.

The economic advisory council of the minister of the economy has come out in support of a slackening of the debt brake. The debt brake is a mechanism that prohibits new debts up to a certain point, and has recently come under increased criticism. The advisory council now joins in with other critics and calls for an exception to the debt brake for new investments. Conservatives and liberals still strongly oppose any slackening of the debt brake, and instead continue to fight raising expenses into social welfare programs.

There might not be enough time this year to finalize an amended budget for the past year, twenty twenty-three, because of the recent ruling of the constitutional court saying the budget of twenty twenty-three has to be passed anew with certain amendments to post-factum legalize some of the spending of this year. In a text by Katja Mast, the chairman of the Social Democratic Party or SPD, to her colleagues mentioned that the parliament might not find a solution to the budgeting problems until the end of the year because the heads of government, Finance Minister Christian Linder, minister of the economy Robert Habeck, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have yet to reach an agreement on details of the plan.

Speaking of Robert Habeck, he announced on Sunday the 3rd that he won’t attend the COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai. His colleagues, Lindner and Schloz, asked him to stay in Berlin to continue the discussion about the twenty twenty-three budget amendment. He was supposed to travel to the conference on Monday the 4th.

It might be ironic, since the minister of the economy and climate protection will not attend the international climate conference because of budgeting issues that also put the green energy transformation of Germany at risk.

On a related note, Steffi Lemke, Minister of Environment, has decided together with representatives of the states to lower the hurdles on the shooting of “problematic” wolves. The Ministry defines a problematic wolf as one that has killed a farm animal. Previously, before a wolf could be shot, the farmers had o to prove via DNA sample that it was a particular problematic wolf who killed the farm animal. Now, the states removed this hurdle, and farmers can apply for wolf-killing permits more easily, and kill any wolf in a certain radius. Environmentalists are criticizing this decision and argue that the state should instead increase funding for herd protection measures such as herding dogs and anti-wolf fences.

And nature strikes again, but a bit more romantically this time. Heavy snowfall has slowed the state of Bavaria since it has stopped public train connections. Every winter, the German train company is surprised and overwhelmed by the snow. In Munich, many people took the hills to ski and ride sleds since some schools didn’t open at the beginning of the week.

Aaaand that’s it for this week. Do you ever wonder who these Rorshok people are and why they care about what is going on in Germany? If so, head over to our website to find out more about us and the other things that we do! You can read all about the organization, other projects we are carrying out, and the other podcasts we do. If something catches your eye, or you have any questions, please reach out. You can find all the contact information and the website link in the show notes.

Ciao!