One could now imagine Erwin Huber as a happy man. He was the first well-known CSU politician to advocate running the three remaining German nuclear reactors, including the Isar 2 power plant near Landshut. That was in February, together with ex-CSU Economics Minister Otto Wiesheu. The war against Ukraine hadn’t even broken out yet. Now, eight months later, Huber’s wish has come true. Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has spoken a word of power: The three reactors should remain online until mid-April 2023. Huber said he was happy on Tuesday when asked by the SZ. But the ex-party leader also says: “From the point of view of the CSU, this is not satisfactory.”
The CSU would have preferred to keep the piles online until the end of 2024, at least. So is Scholz’s power word a defeat for the CSU, which has been drumming for a multi-year extension for months? Yes, thinks Katharina Schulze. “The chancellor has finally ended what the pro-nuclear lobby wanted to achieve: the exit from the exit,” says the parliamentary group leader of the Greens, who believes that the CSU is part of the nuclear lobby. But from the CSU perspective, the Scholz power word is by no means a defeat. More of a stroke of luck from a strategic point of view.
This is best understood if you imagine that the chancellor would not have ordered a stretching operation, but the maximum demand of the Union: an extension of the term until at least the end of 2024. Then CSU boss Markus Söder could have staged himself as a triumphant, but he would have been suddenly lost a topic that he identified as a campaign hit: nuclear energy as a protection against the blackout, a large-scale power failure. The stretching operation, on the other hand, gives the CSU the opportunity to stretch its drumming for a longer term extension well into the 2023 election year.
The fact that Söder will make use of this possibility is already suggested by the tweet that he sent shortly after the chancellor’s word of power: “Is that all? What a disappointment: the problem has only been postponed. (…) The danger of a Blackouts in the coming year remain.” Everyone can think of the comment that there will be elections in Bavaria next year.
Isar 2 near Landshut is one of the nuclear power plants that will continue to run until mid-April 2023.
(Photo: Armin Weigel/dpa)
Not that Söder would have wished for the energy crisis as an election campaign topic. And of course there are a number of CSU members who are honestly convinced of nuclear power, see Erwin Huber. But when the crisis is already there, someone like Söder knows how to use it strategically. “Looked at in this way, the factual and tactical objectives of the CSU are in full agreement,” says Huber, the ex-party leader.
“I wish he would stop riding the dead horse nuclear power now”
The Greens, the declared main opponents of the CSU, are now appealing to Söder to bury nuclear power as a campaign issue. “I would like him to stop riding the dead horse nuclear power now,” says parliamentary group leader Schulze. “Instead, I invite Markus Söder to enter the competition of good ideas on how we can expand renewable energies in Bavaria more quickly.” However: There is little evidence that Schulze’s wish will come true. “The CSU has to keep up the pressure for the continued operation of the nuclear power plants and has to even increase it,” says Erwin Huber.
Instead of working on the Greens in Bavaria, the CSU recently attacked the Greens in Berlin in particular, almost on their behalf. This proxy war could continue even more after the Chancellor gave his nuclear power word – and determine the state election campaign in 2023. She’s “not afraid at all,” says Green Party leader Schulze. “Pure despair,” she calls the CSU’s nuclear power offensive. “Because Markus Söder has no ideas of his own for the energy supply of the future, he clings to ideas from mothballs.” The tone of the election campaign has long been set.