Internal party struggles keep Germany’s conservative ministers from doing their jobs

A fight over immigration policy between Germany’s two conservative sister parties paralyses the work of conservative ministers in charge of energy transition policies, Nikolaus Doll, Michael Fabricius and Daniel Wetzel write in Die Welt. Energy and economy minister Peter Altmaier from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and his colleagues from the Bavarian CSU, transport minister Andreas Scheuer and interior minister Horst Seehofer, who is also responsible for construction policy, "can hardly do their job due to all of the quarrels and crisis meetings,” the authors say. Shortly before parliament’s summer break, “unsolved tasks in transport, energy, and construction policy are piling up – all areas that require immediate action”. The resurging dieselgate scandal, inner-city driving bans, sluggish building modernisation and a housing shortage as well as questions over renewables expansion pose challenges that need to be addressed, but the conservatives “seem to be focused on immigration”.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW profiles of Altmaier and Scheuer for more information.