Green Party calls for German climate ministry with veto power

If they are part of a future government, the German Greens want to install a climate ministry that has the right to veto other ministry’s plans in case they are not compatible with the Paris Climate Agreement, party leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck announced during a press conference on Tuesday. The climate ministry is to lead a "climate task force", which would convene weekly in a federal government meeting and steer policy towards the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5-degrees Celsius. The installment of such a ministry is part of the Greens’ ten-point plan of immediate climate measures for the first 100 days of government, announced by the party leaders. "We will adopt the largest climate protection package ever in the cabinet,” the party writes. The Greens want to expand renewable energy production by tripling expansion targets. To achieve this goal, they call for a ‘solar power obligation’ for new public and commercial buildings and two percent of German land area to be made available for wind energy projects. Other measures include bringing forward the date of the coal phase-out to 2030 (currently 2038), raising the CO2 price to 60 euros per tonne (currently 25) and investing 2.5 billion euros in climate-friendly mobility. The party also wants to increase the federal budget for climate protection by an additional 15 billion euros.

German voters will head to the polls on 26 September. According to recent polls, the Greens are in second place with about 18 percent of the vote, about ten points behind the conservative CDU/CSU. This gives the party a good chance to become part of the next government, either as a smaller partner or even as the strongest faction in a coalition with one or two partners.