Söder accuses the federal government of distrust of the rural population
In his speech, Söder then addressed the actual reason for his visit: the amendment to the Building Energy Act, which he sharply criticized: Berlin has a fundamental distrust of the rural population. Climate protection must be promoted together with the citizens and not against them. The question arises as to who should pay for all the conversion costs and renovations for new heating systems.
“I have no desire to go bankrupt alongside the Greens,” said Söder. There was occasional applause, especially when the Prime Minister attacked the Greens or campaigned for the rural population and agriculture. Overall, Söder still met with a lot of rejection.
Boos for FDP country chief Hagen, applause for Economics Minister Aiwanger
The Bavarian FDP chairman Martin Hagen had a similar experience. Due to almost continuous boos, his speech below the stands was difficult to understand. Hagen said of the first bill: “What Robert Habeck presented is botch, that’s crap, that’s not practical.” Hagen is a member of the federal executive board of the FDP, which will have to support a final heating law as part of the traffic light – but not in its current form, as Hagen promised the demonstrators: “Note my words and measure me by my words: My FDP will support the draft not agree in this version in the Bundestag.”
On the other hand, there was applause for Bavaria’s Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (free voters). He, too, clearly criticized the federal government’s plans: “We can’t go on watching how this traffic light, which is dominated by green, drives Germany to the wall,” said Aiwanger. The Greens didn’t want to save the climate, they wanted to destroy property and prosperity.
Aiwanger described the heating law as “madness” and that it had to be “put in the bin.” Finally, the Economics Minister thanked the people on site: the ball had been set in motion in Erding, which would pull the rug out from under the feet of this law. “Now the point has been reached where the large, silent majority has to take back democracy and say to those in Berlin: ‘You’ve got your ass open up there,'” said Aiwanger.
SPD and Greens call for more objectivity
The co-chair of the Bavarian SPD, Ronja Endres, responded on Twitter. She warned the parties involved against playing with fire and called on them to get back to business. “Bring your own real suggestions instead of destructive populism,” Endres tweeted. The green member of the state parliament Katharina Schulze tweeted that Söder’s “crawling” to a certain milieu strengthens populists and harms democracy – his temptation for “quick, cheap applause” was probably too great. The federal chairman of the Greens, Ricarda Lanf, also wrote on Twitter: “Today, Erding shows to the point why the strategy of talking to the right mouth does not work.”