GERMANY: Climate Protection Act & more – 18th Apr 2024

Hallo from BA! This is the Rorshok Germany Update from the 18th of April twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Germany.

To start off this week, the federal government has reached a long-awaited compromise on a rewrite of the already existing Climate Protection Act. The executive planned the rewrite last year, and has long been controversial.

Previously, each government sector, such as traffic, infrastructure, or construction, had to cut emissions by a certain percentage. If the sector didn’t reach that goal then it had to implement cut-emission programs immediately.

However, in the rewrite, the emission is calculated by adding the emissions of each ministry, so what matters is the emission of the country as a whole.

Climate activists criticized this because the rewrite would abandon the sector goals and the emission cut programs, slowing down Germany’s already slow progress to a climate-neutral economy—that is, having activities that don’t have a negative effect on climate.

The emissions of the country as a whole were down by 10% compared to last year, and are currently at the lowest since nineteen ninety. This is mostly because of the weak economy and the mild winter.

On a related note, the traffic sector has missed its goal again. twenty twenty-four is the third year in a row that Volker Wissing, the traffic minister of the Free Liberal Party or FDP, failed to reach the emission reduction goals for his sector. Even though the government agreed on the draft for a revised climate protection act, the old one is still in effect, so Wissing now has to launch an immediate response program to cut emissions. Allegedly, to hasten his colleagues, he threatened to implement weekend driving restrictions on gasoline-powered cars.

Moving on, a panel of experts called upon by the government has recommended legalizing abortions in the first twelve weeks of pregnancies. Currently, abortions are illegal. The law is as old as the first German state, it was introduced in eighteen seventy-one when the German Reich was formed. Even though abortion is illegal, in some cases, the punishment of up to one year in prison is not carried out.

The government had announced its intentions to modernize abortion law when it came into office. The conservative Christian democrats, or CDU, said that they will sue the government if they try to legalize abortions.

Staying with health issues, the FDP has put an end to the plans of Lauterbach, the health minister, to introduce health kiosks. These are small aid stations that were supposed to be in the 1.000 poorest neighborhoods of German cities and remote towns, where people could get aid and medical assistance. However, Christian Lindner, the minister of finance, is insisting on saving government funds. So even after Lauterbach cut down the number of stations to 220 the FDP didn’t give in. There’s still a chance that the aid stations might materialize, but they will be different from what was originally planned. The idea was that health insurance would cover the services but it won’t be this way in the new plan. People would have to pay for medical aid out of pocket, which, considering that the aim of the stations was to provide assistance to economically weak areas, the stations would miss the goal completely.

Up next, some financial news as the biggest German companies, who are listed in the German Shares Index or DAX, have paid out record dividends in a year of severe economic turmoil. Twenty-three out of the forty DAX companies have raised their dividends to shareholders in the last year. The dividends were raised by 2.4 percent compared to twenty twenty-three, which already was a record-breaking year in dividends paid out. The German GDP has grown only marginally in twenty twenty-three, and the worldwide economic situation is putting heavy strain on the export-focused German economy.

On Friday the 12th, the controversial Palestine Congress in Berlin ended just a few hours after it started as the police stormed the venue and put an end to the event, which was supposed to run for three days. The police justified their actions, saying that a speech by Salman Abu Sitta, an international activist, author, and researcher, was live-streamed. The thing is that the Ministry of Interior banned him from participating in political activities in Germany. Shortly after the storming of the event, the participants of the congress organized a protest march that took place that same Friday. According to the police, around 1.900 people attended. The organizers of the congress are planning to go to court, as they consider that the police’s actions were unlawful and over the top.

In connection with the Palestine Congress, The Interior Ministry banned Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former financial minister, from entering Germany. He was also scheduled to speak at the Palestine Conference but German authorities banned him from participating in political activities in the country.

In a follow-up of a story from a previous show, we have reported that the ultra-right Alternative for Germany or the AFD party won the mayoral elections in Großschirma, a small town in the east of the country. The town will probably have to rerun the election, as the winning candidate didn’t follow the correct procedure when putting himself up as a candidate. Reportedly, he didn’t sign his admission papers. He, of course, sees it as a conspiracy against him.

Staying on the topic of the Ultra-right, the federal police have released data on the numbers of politically motivated crimes from the right. Compared to this time last year, there has been an increase of seven percent, which amounts to a total of almost 24,000 crimes, including 1.270 violent crimes and four murders. These numbers became public after the Left Party in the national parliament asked the government for the statistics, as they do every four months.

On to foreign politics, on Tuesday the 16th, Chancellor Scholz visited China. His talks with Xi, the leader of the communist party and head of state in China, mainly focused on the economy. However, they also discussed the Russian-Ukrainian war, and he urged him to stop delivering weapons to Russia.

On that note about Ukraine, Robert Habeck, the vice chancellor and minister of the economy, arrived in Kyiv on Thursday the 18th, and met with president Zelenskyy, the minister of the economy, Swyrydenko, and minister of energy, Haluschtschenk, to talk about the bilateral relations and the possibility of Germany aiding Ukraine both in the fighting of the war and the rebuilding of the country. The talks will be specially focussed on the recent attacks by Russia on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

And that’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Do you know that besides the Germany Update, we also do others? Our latest ones are the Arctic Update, about the area north of the Arctic Circle, and the Ocean Update, about the 70% of the world covered in salt water. The other ones are all country updates, we have a selection of countries from Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe. Check roroshok.com/updates to see the full list. Find the link in the show notes as well.

Ciao!