When asked about his now past green phase, when he hugged trees and even flirted with a coalition with the Greens, Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) reacted rather cautiously today. Today he wants to be understood differently: still climate-friendly, but no longer green-friendly at all. That was also the core of his remarks at the sustainability summit Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich on Wednesday.
He doesn’t just want to talk about clichés, said Söder, who occasionally feels misunderstood on climate issues, but about the reality in Bavaria. And in his opinion it works like this: “Sustainability is a central motive of the Bavarian state government for me personally.” It’s the state election campaign in Bavaria, the Greens are the main opponents, the boss takes care of the climate himself – in his opinion, there’s no need for an eco-party. That’s just for classification.
At the event in the “Munich Urban Colab”, the Prime Minister and CSU boss began to praise Bavaria, of course, that’s part of the core of his job. His mantra “Bavaria is great” can then be applied to all areas of life and politics. In terms of climate and sustainability, this may surprise some who immediately associate the Free State and the CSU with nuclear power, road construction and roast pork, but Söder has his own interpretation. Bavaria wants to be climate-neutral by 2040, and he is sticking to that goal. This requires a few superlatives. Bavaria has “the largest hydrogen program in a federal state” and is at the forefront of renewable energies in “dynamics and expansion”.
Although the CSU brought the expansion of wind power to a standstill for years with the strict 10-hour distance rule, there is no longer any talk of that. According to Söder, 1,000 wind turbines are to be built in Bavaria by 2030, mostly in the forests.
He says he doesn’t want to “tumble it down like that,” all these great measures, but “that’s the reality that we’re doing”. You could hear who needs the Greens, because he also says: “You have to do it with the people.” And that in turn implies that the Greens are doing it against the people.
That’s why Söder appeared at a demonstration “against the heating ideology” in Erding more than two weeks ago, which brought national fame. Söder was initially booed there, mainly by the numerous AfD supporters, while his deputy Hubert Aiwanger was celebrated by the Free Voters for his appearance and the sentence that the large, silent majority had to bring democracy back.
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Alexandra Föderl-Schmid asked whether the appearance in Erding had been a mistake. “No, absolutely not,” said Söder, because he had taken a clear position against the AfD there. He is committed to democracy and is not willing to endanger his “credibility and my personal political decency” with applause from the wrong side.
Nevertheless, what is the “ideology” of the heating law, asked Lisa Nienhaus, head of the SZ business editorial team. “It’s crunching from start to finish,” said Söder and he had the feeling that there were “clear ideological guidelines from start to finish”. He sees a “classic form of excessive demands” on the Greens. And then the Prime Minister allowed himself a comment that perhaps very few people in the hall bought, but which brought him a lot of laughter: “The traffic light government bashed itself for weeks, in a way I wouldn’t dare.” Söder, the reserved one? He still has to work on this role a little.