The parties position themselves for the Bundestag election. Follow all developments in the news blog.
Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock wants to press for a withdrawal of the US atomic bombs from Germany in the event of an election victory. With a view to the disarmament negotiations between the USA and Russia, a new federal government must make it clear: “Of course, American nuclear weapons must also be part of this disarmament here in Germany and in Europe as a whole,” said Baerbock on Monday evening in the ARD “election arena” https: / /www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/. “We currently have a window of opportunity and we have to use that and not pursue a foreign policy that ducks away when in doubt.”
At the end of July, the nuclear powers USA and Russia started new disarmament talks that had previously been agreed at a summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Together with other NATO states such as Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey, Germany is involved in NATO’s nuclear deterrent through the stationing of nuclear weapons. According to estimates, around 20 atomic bombs are still stored at Büchel Air Base in the Eifel, which are to be dropped by Bundeswehr fighter jets in an emergency. In addition to the Greens and the Left, the party and parliamentary group leaders of the SPD have also spoken out in favor of withdrawing US nuclear weapons. The Union is strictly against it.
Merz urges the FDP to reject the traffic light coalition
The CDU economic politician Friedrich Merz has called on the FDP to exclude a traffic light coalition with the SPD and the Greens in the federal government. The liberals should “articulate themselves more clearly” and say that they are not available for a traffic light, he said on Sunday in the ARD. Merz is part of the eight-person so-called “future team” of Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, with whom he recently started the hot phase of the election campaign.
FDP leader Christian Lindner avoided stipulating in the ARD whether a traffic light coalition would come into question. He is promoting a strong FDP with an independent role. “Our offer is a policy of the center – in view of the flirtations of red-green with the left and also in view of the current weakness of the Union.” But it is also important that the Union is closer to the FDP in the matter than the SPD or the Greens. These stand for openness to expropriation, bureaucracy and redistribution, subsidies and higher taxes. “Now this is not a program that has an intrinsic relationship to our program.”
On an earlier occasion, Lindner had already thought about the allocation of responsibilities in a so-called Jamaica coalition with the Union and the Greens and complained to the Ministry of Finance for the FDP. The FDP boss emphasized in the ARD that this question is not about the “career of individual liberals, but about political content”.
Merz should list the future team and refuses
Big names from the front row of the Union are not exactly numerous in Armin Laschet’s “future team”. Many of the members of the eight-person group with which the CDU candidate for chancellor wants to go into the decisive phase of the election campaign are likely to be unknown to most citizens. Friedrich Merz is certainly the best-known face, some people may have heard of Dorothee Bär, the Minister of State for Digital Affairs, terrorism expert Peter Neumann and the Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Education Karin Prien. But after that it gets pretty thin.
This is probably what the editorial team thought too of the ARD program “Report from Berlin”. In any case, moderator Matthias Deiß listed the four more well-known members on Sunday and provocatively asked Merz, whether he had “the other four names ready”. One can assume that Deiß prepared himself and could have named all eight team members, even if he revealed certain pronunciation problems with Karin Prien.
Whether Merz is also saddle-proof with all the names remains to be seen. He immediately claimed: “Yes, of course, I have the whole team ready.” When asked whether he could also list them, the economic politician replied in the affirmative, but then he was a bit annoyed and not very motivated to show his knowledge: “We’re not doing school here, are we ?!” Whether children and young people in school should list a CDU future team is another question. In the ARD broadcast, moderator Deiß replied that you could try it. But Merz obviously didn’t feel like doing that, stubbornly refused and ended the topic with a smile and the words: “I know who is on the team, and you know it too, so everything is fine.”
Towards the end of the question and answer session, Deiß tried one more time and asked for the remaining names: “Can I still get them from you or not?” But there was no list of names to be drawn up with Merz: “Neither of us are going to be silly here.” (06.09.2021)
Greens are calling for a speed limit of 130 on motorways
The Greens want to tackle a German issue if they participate in government after the election at the end of September. “For road safety, we need a general safety speed of 130 on motorways in Germany,” says Green Party leader Anton Hofreiter Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Green politician sees a mood trend for such a general speed limit. “The majority of the population, even the members of the ADAC, are in favor,” said Hofreiter in the run-up to the IAA auto show in Munich.
While the SPD and the Left are also in favor of the limit, the Union, FDP and the AfD reject the introduction. Most recently, specialist bodies had given up their skepticism. After decades of restraint, the German Road Safety Council is now recommending a speed limit on motorways “in order to sustainably reduce the number of seriously injured and fatalities in road accidents”. The auto industry, on the other hand, continues to oppose the plan and is in favor of route-related solutions. Markus Balser (05.09.2021)
Youtuber Rezo takes a close look at the parties’ climate policy
The well-known German Youtuber sharply criticized the grand coalition’s climate policy in his latest video. Get the most criticism in “Destruction part 2“Again politicians of the Union. So there are in the Union of Values - which is not a recognized party division of the CDU / CSU – some politicians who denied man-made climate change, so Rezo in the video. In addition, a large number of politicians have been on the for years Payroll of energy companies such as RWE. At the same time, the coal phase-out is progressing much more slowly than scientists demanded in order to meet global climate targets.
The Union’s current candidate for chancellor, Armin Laschet, is also playing a role again. He admitted to having the Hambach Forest evacuated under the pretext of “fire protection”, although there was no legal basis for this. RWE wanted to clear the forest for lignite mining, and climate protectors had holed up there to prevent this. In the video, Rezo called on people over 50 to vote in favor of the younger generation, who would later suffer most from the consequences of climate policy.