exist Under peopleIt is a best-selling novel by the German novelist Julieze. The residents of a village outside Berlin were surprised to find that a piece of land in front of their house had been designated for the construction of a huge wind farm.
One of the characters is a birdwatcher named Gerhard Fliess who knows what to do: He called an old friend of the local environment ministry to remind him that the countryside around Unterleuten is a habitat for an endangered snipe. This will definitely stop bulldozers.
However, his friends in the department had different ideas. “So what,” he said sarcastically, “this is the future.” Green policy Germany It no longer just means protecting the nesting wading birds, but freeing up business to build, build, and build.
Zeh’s Village Legend, published in 2016, but recently turned into TV seriesAs Germany enters the post-Merkel era under the leadership of the new government, this may become a prophecy.
From a foreign perspective, the three parties that may fill government seats from the second week of December are a strange match, even according to the centrist standards of German league politics.
Although the future Prime Minister Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) served as the junior partner of Merkel’s conservatives in three of Merkel’s four terms, thus demonstrating its ideological significance. Flexible, but the two smaller parties’ entry into the government’s agenda seems almost diametrically opposed: the green party that vowed to protect the environment from Germany’s dirty industries, and the Liberal Democratic Party, which hopes to free industry from cumbersome regulation ( FDP).
Wolfgang Merkel, a political scientist at Humboldt University in Berlin, said: “The three parties clearly agree that they want to see more progress, but they do not necessarily point in the same direction.” “It is certain that there will be conflicts of interest along the way. .”
Because its leader Christian Lindner is installed in the Ministry of Finance, the debt-averse FDP will have de facto veto power over the spending plans of the two center-left parties. The conflicting agenda means that the next German government is already helpless in areas such as tax reform. The Social Democratic Party and the Green Party want to raise interest rates, while the Liberal Democratic Party wants to cut interest rates. Therefore, they will feel pressure to carry out a series of activities in areas where their ideas of change overlap.
The three parties hope to relax old citizenship laws, simplify immigration, improve the rights of gay and transgender people, lower the voting age to 16 years, and legalize the recreational use of marijuana.Lit by this “Traffic light” government, Germany may finally realize the liberal charging standards usually associated with Merkel’s name abroad, but not at home.
In other areas, this may simply mean reducing red tape to accelerate structural change without having to go deep into the country’s coffers.
The 173-page alliance agreement announced on Wednesday contains every three pages of a variant of the term “de-bureaucratization” or “de-bureaucratization,” vowing to “remove all obstacles and obstacles” to ensure that renewable energy accounts for the country’s total 80% of electricity demand by 2030. In the hands of the free FDP, the Department of Justice will consider simplifying this process as its job.
Wind farms will be built on the land of 16 German states, each with at least 2% of the land-and the snipe habitat will have to lower the priority list to ensure it can be achieved.
Both the Green Party and the Liberal Democratic Party have served in the government: the Eco Party served as the junior partner of Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democratic Party from 1998 to 2005, while the Liberal Party joined Merkel’s Christian Democrats from 2009 to 2013. The party shares power. But the prospects of both sides are different. Great changes have taken place since then, and they will use the next four years to show how.
The Green Party not only doubled its membership, but also got rid of its pacifist roots in foreign policy. The new Foreign Minister Annalena Belbok has already hinted at a more confrontational route with China and Russia. The alliance agreement calls on Brussels to take a tougher stance in the fight against the rule of law in countries such as Poland and Hungary, and supports the procurement of armed drones for the military.
At the same time, the Liberal Democratic Party has pushed its liberal tendencies to the edge of the party. Andrea Römmele, a professor of political communication at the Herty Institute in Berlin, said: “They have moved from a neoliberal party that focuses solely on economics to talk more about civil liberties and digitalization.” “They are in Corona. I started to play this role during the crisis, but it went well.”
Gone are the days Genscherism, When FDP envisioned Germany as a bridge between East and West. Last month, the Liberal Party called on German universities to cut ties with the Confucius Institute, which is seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft power.
The two smaller parties will have more seats in the Bundestag than the SPD, and their mission statement does not sound too different on paper: seize the missed opportunities of the past decade and let Germany face the future.
The Green Party defines sustainability ecologically and FDP economically. “The stories we want to tell are complementary,” said Karl-Heinz Parker, chairman of the Friedrich Naumann Free Foundation, a think tank affiliated with the FDP.
Among the joint leaders of Treasury Secretary Lindner and Green, the new deputy prime minister and super minister of climate economy Robert Habeck (Robert Habeck), they also have two rhetorical talents and a thirst for power to speak out for these politics. Family.
For Scholz, the risk is that he will be demoted to Prime Minister and take on the role of moderator, while the two radical politicians around him set the national agenda.
Andreas Busch, professor of political science at the University of Göttingen, said: “The Green Party and FDP are often portrayed as rivals, but they have many similarities.” “They are the’rich in German party politics’. ‘, the voters of these parties are highly educated and economically sound.” It may fall on the center-left to protect the rest of the country from the chain reaction of creative class creative destruction.
Wolfgang Merkel said: “The days when the German Chancellor determined the direction of travel and followed by the government are gone.” “But this is not to say that Schultz cannot copy Merkel. The trick: owe their best ideas to themselves and turn them into strong support for their party.”
To this end, Schultz must also create a public image that sounds different from his predecessor. When the two parties presented their deal on Wednesday, it became clear: Lindner insisted freely and persistently, and Habaek interrupted the SPD co-leader Sasca Esken, telling her that she must wait for the round. To her. At the same time, Schultz read out a scripted speech in a Merkelian, monotonous manner.
