After all, on Thursday the deputies are sitting in the warmth. It’s running again, the heating system in the Maximilianeum, which failed on Wednesday. A curious incident, because everyone is wondering whether Germany or Bavaria will soon have to freeze without gas from Russia? The plenary debate, which President Ilse Aigner (CSU) will open in the morning, will deal with these and other questions about the war in Ukraine.
A discussion will develop in which the opposition will blame the state government for both failures in energy policy and chaos in helping the refugees. But the president of the state parliament set the first sign, saying of Russia’s head of state: “Putin destroyed the security architecture and the peace order on our continent.” Then Aigner announces that the state parliament is suspending its partnerships with Moscow’s regional parliaments.
All factions in the state parliament condemn the war, but Ludwig Hartmann does not want to stop at statements of solidarity for the Ukraine. Instead of expanding wind power and advancing renewable energies, “CSU policy has driven us into maximum dependence on fossil fuels,” criticizes the chairman of the Greens parliamentary group, recalling that Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) still in January for the Commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was supposed to bring Russian gas to Germany.
Alexander König, deputy parliamentary leader of the CSU, still does not believe that “turning off a gas tap will persuade Putin to stop the war.” That’s why “everything has to be put to the test” in energy policy – the CSU is campaigning here in particular for a longer service life for the nuclear power plants that are still in operation, including Isar 2 in Lower Bavaria.
“No Ban on Thinking”
“We free voters are not supporters of nuclear power,” says Rainer Ludwig. But he, too, pleads for nuclear energy and coal to be “examined without prejudice and without any prohibitions on thinking”. Ulrich Henkel, whose AfD parliamentary group has put the topic on the agenda of the state parliament, sees it in a similar way. Despite his criticism of the “attack on Ukraine,” he can imagine “continuing to source gas in Russia.”
“No bans on thinking” are also demanded by Anne Franke (Greens), but from the CSU, which calls on her to drop the 10-hour distance rule for wind turbines “at least out of solidarity with Ukraine”, which blocks the expansion of wind power in Bavaria . The same demand comes from the SPD, whose faction leader Florian von Brunn says that the Free State is now “paying the bill for energy policy mistakes” of the past. For him, too, the expansion of renewable energies in Bavaria has been going too slowly for a long time.
Julika Sandt (FDP) dedicates her speaking time primarily to refugee aid. At Munich Central Station, where most war refugees arrive in Bavaria, “inhumane conditions” prevailed. Too few beds, no toilets, no advice, this is how Sandt describes the conditions, which have also been criticized by the helpers at the main station.
“The state government should be ashamed of that,” says Gülseren Demirel (Greens). The FW deputy Nikolaus Kraus holds against it. He says that the reception of refugees works better “everywhere” in Bavaria than in Munich. Europe Minister Melanie Huml (CSU) sees the federal government as having a duty here. “We would like to get clearer coordination from the federal level,” she says at the end of the debate.
Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) had previously commented on the Greens’ call for a disaster to be declared in Bavaria in order to be able to better organize the aid. Herrmann said he had already informed the cabinet on Tuesday that he would expand the K-case applicable to the pandemic “to cope with the flow of refugees”.