“It wouldn’t have happened with the Greens”

The Green Party not being part of the federal government for the past 12 years is a “medium-sized economic and ecologic disaster”, writes Bernd Ulrich in an opinion piece in German weekly Die Zeit. The current emissions and carmaker cartel scandal showed that the government was too interwoven with the industry and unwilling to act as the “corrective and supervisor” it should be. “If anyone could have pulled the car companies out of their diesel madness on time and pushed them for their own good, then it would have been the party of the ecologic cause and the long-term view, equipped with federal political power,” writes Ulrich.

Read the opinion piece in German here.

For background, read the CLEW dossier Vote2017 - German elections and the Energiewende.