Ricarda Lang smiles, but the Green Party leader seems very annoyed at her own press conference: “I can now say the sentences the other way around, but I think that will not result in a new answer,” says Lang when asked for the sixth time about payment cards.
Because the press on Monday is not satisfied with what the co-chair of the Green Party wrote on her note.
For days, the FDP, SPD and numerous prime ministers have been increasing the pressure on the Greens to clear the way for a payment card for refugees.
Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit also made it clear on Monday morning that he expected movement from the Greens: “The legal agreement that is at stake is so narrow that I don’t believe that there should be so much argument.”
But the Greens don’t want a narrow law either. “This feels like a very theoretical debate to me,” Lang said a few hours after Hebestreit’s appearance.
She referred to Hamburg and Bavaria, where corresponding payment cards have already been launched. “I can’t fully understand the excitement in this debate, because in reality it’s already happening.”
As long as there is no legal certainty, Baden-Württemberg will not introduce any payment cards.
In the green-black ruled southwest they wish Government circles a clarification from the federal government.
In fact, districts and states already have the option of switching the payment of funds to a payment card for refugees.
But after the 16 Prime Ministers, together with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), decided on a “nationally uniform payment card” at their meeting at the beginning of November, there is now a great desire for legal clarification at the federal level.
The payment card is intended to make it more difficult to pay out cash and transfer money to the refugees’ home countries.
“It must be possible to support a compromise within the traffic light coalition that is agreed between the federal government and 16 state governments of very different stripes,” said the Saarland Prime Minister, Anke Rehlinger (SPD), and criticized the Greens as “raisers of concern.”
Even within the Greens’ own ranks, however, there also seems to be a desire for more security.
“As long as there is no legal certainty, Baden-Württemberg will not introduce a payment card,” says government circles in Stuttgart, where the Greens with Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann govern together with the CDU. “We would therefore welcome a nationwide clarification.”
But in the Green Party parliamentary group, where the left wing has a majority, they don’t want to hear about it: “The question arises as to why something should now suddenly be additionally regulated by law, which is already possible and has already been legally addressed in some federal states will,” says Marcel Emmerich, chairman of the Greens in the Interior Committee, to the Tagesspiegel.
On the other hand, he criticized Scholz and his head of the Chancellery, Wolfgang Schmidt: “Above all, it seems to be a distraction debate from the mismanagement and chaos in the Chancellery.”
In terms of content, Emmerich also warned against over-regulation through a nationwide law: “Different conditions apply in the country than in the city.”