Green Party ready to compromise on coal exit timing, cars

The German Greens have signalled their readiness to make concessions on core policy demands in the field of climate protection for the sake of advancing the stagnant coalition talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the pro-business FDP, media reports suggest. The Greens’ co-leader, Cem Özdemir, told the Stuttgarter Zeitung that his party was ready to relinquish its key transport policy demand of banning the fresh registration of cars with fossil combustion engines after 2030. “I’m aware that we cannot enforce a 2030 end date for licensing fossil combustion engines all by ourselves”, Özdemir said.
His fellow party co-leader, Simone Peter, said that the Greens’ core climate policy demand of ending coal-fired power production by 2030 was likewise not irrevocable. “For us, it’s not about whether the last coal plants goes off the grid in 2030 or in 2032”, she told the Rheinische Post. The party leaders’ statements are seen as part of a give-and-take approach towards the Greens’ ‘Jamaica coalition’ negotiating partners, who say that these policies would put Germany’s energy supply security and economic competitiveness in jeopardy.

Read the article in the Stuttgarter Zeitung in German here and the article in the Rheinische Post in German here.

For background on the talks check out CLEW’s Coalition watch and the articles German coalition talks stuck over climate, energy policy and Combustion engine ban splitting point in coalition talks on transport.

Please note: Clean Energy Wire will publish an article on this later today.