Fridays for Future wants Transport Minister Volker Wissing to resign

climate policy
“Breach of the law”: Fridays for Future again calls for the resignation of Transport Minister Wissing – and Tempo 120 on the Autobahn

With its own emergency program for the transport sector, the organization Fridays for Future (FFF) wants to increase the pressure on the federal government to change transport policy. In it, the activists demand, among other things, a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour on motorways or the expansion of local public transport (ÖPNV) and rail. In addition, their program provides for car-free inner cities and the expansion of cycling infrastructure. In addition, the organization reiterated its demands for the resignation of Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP).

Fridays for Future accuses Volker Wissing of “breaking the law”.

Fridays for Future accuses the federal government of “breaching the law” with regard to its own climate goals. The background to this is that both the transport and the building sectors once again failed to meet the federal government’s CO2 reduction targets last year. Such sectors must use emergency programs to explain which measures are to be taken to ensure that the goals are met in the medium term. The deadline for this expired on Monday.

“Under the current legal situation, there is a very clear legal obligation to submit an emergency program,” said FFF lawyer Caroline Douhaire. She describes the omission of the sectors as a “breach of the law”. For the second year in a row, Wissing is not complying with the law, said Viviane Raddatz, climate chief at the environmental protection organization WWF Germany.

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The federal government rejected the allegations on Monday. A government spokeswoman in Berlin referred to the climate protection program that the federal government presented in June. A spokesman for Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) said: “We disagree with the claim that we have not presented any additional climate protection measures.” The federal government’s climate protection program also contains additional measures for the transport sector. The Ministry complies with the legal obligation.

Wissing also criticized Fridays for Future’s proposals for more sustainable traffic. They ignored “the reality of life for most people in Germany. The program would cause serious damage to the economy and prosperity,” he said.

The transport sector had already failed to meet the federal government’s climate targets in 2021. The Ministry then drew up an immediate programme. This was judged to be so inadequate by the competent expert council that the committee decided not to carry out a more comprehensive examination – also because the ministry had already referred to the federal government’s climate protection program at the time.

Transport sector emits too much CO2

Transport is the biggest construction site when it comes to climate protection, said Pit Terjung from Fridays for Future. That’s where the least has happened in the last few decades. In 2022, the transport sector, with around 150 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, was 11 million tonnes above the 139 million tonnes permitted for the year.

The federal government wants to reform the climate protection law with its targets for each sector. Compliance with the climate targets should no longer be checked retrospectively according to various sectors such as transport, industry or agriculture, but should be forward-looking, multi-year and cross-sectoral. In the future, the federal government as a whole should decide in which sector and with which measures the permissible total amount of CO2 is to be achieved by 2030 – but only if the target is missed two years in a row.

Fridays for Future again criticized the project on Monday as a “step backwards”. “We need and demand a climate protection law that sets the course for Germany to become climate-neutral by 2035,” said Terjung. With the abolition of the sector targets, “the overdue turnaround in mobility threatens to lose its last momentum,” said Greenpeace traffic expert Marissa Reiser.

The transport sector had also become a contentious issue at the Berlin state level in recent weeks. The announcement by Transport Senator Manja Schreiner (CDU) that plans for cycle paths and the usefulness of certain projects would be put to the test for the time being had recently caused a lot of criticism and debates about transport policy in Berlin.

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DPA