Habeck in the tagesthemen interview: “We don’t do our job adequately”

Federal Minister of Economics Habeck has daily topics-Interview criticized the current balance and the state of the traffic light coalition. Before the coalition committee, he is counting on more unity.

Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) has sharply criticized the current performance of the federal government. “We have an order for the people, for Germany to do something, and at the moment we are not doing enough,” said Habeck in the daily topics.

He hopes “that we can untie a lot of knots this week and overcome a lot of blockages. And then get a really good performance record again. But that’s certainly not the case at the moment.” One cannot “now say that things are being processed quickly at the moment”, although in his opinion they are ready for a decision and finished, said Habeck.

“A bit alarmed whether there is any willingness to reach an agreement at all”

The minister also criticized the fact that the bill for replacing the heating system had been “leaked to the Bild newspaper – I must assume deliberately – at a very early stage in order to damage trust in the government”. As a result, talks between the coalition partners were “probably destroyed on purpose, because of the cheap tactical advantage”. Since something like this “doesn’t happen by accident”, he was “a bit alarmed as to whether there was any willingness to come to an agreement at all”.

This has damaged confidence in the government. “And a government that gambles away trust has of course lost its biggest pound,” said Habeck. He assumes that this can be put together again at the coalition committee next Sunday. “The cooperation in the cabinet is impeccable, we can discuss things calmly and quite normally,” stressed Habeck, “but we just can’t get them over the political finish line, because then we keep looking at how the media echo chamber is, what’s going on my next party conference, where are the next state elections”.

In the past few weeks there have been numerous discussions between the SPD, Greens and FDP, from the expansion of the motorway to a ban on new oil and gas heating systems to the upcoming budget for 2024.

Now the governing coalition must “focus on ourselves again and make it clear to us again what a privilege it is to be in this government, to make it clear that climate protection is also a task for society as a whole”.