“At least 1.2 billion for Lusatia”

Eastern German states Saxony and Brandenburg demand at least 1.2 billion euros in federal funds to finance the economic transformation of their shared coal-mining region Lusatia, Jens Blankennagel writes in Berliner Zeitung. “The end of coal mining there has finally come in sight,” Blankennagel says. In a joint letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel, Saxony’s state premier Stanislav Tillich and his Brandenburg colleague Dietmar Woidke called for the sum to be paid over five years from 2019 to 2024 to fund “structural development projects that go beyond what has already been agreed”, he writes. Both prime ministers emphasised that Lusatia needed to remain an industrial region after the last coal mine shut its doors. Blankennagel says planned tourism projects are unlikely to absorb the 24,000 industry jobs associated with lignite mining in Lusatia.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet When will Germany finally ditch coal? for background.