“Lacking the art of governing”

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel likes to think of herself as a politician who “thinks things through to the end” – but the constitutional court’s judgement on the hasty 2011 nuclear exit suggests otherwise, writes Thorsten Knuf in a commentary for Berliner Zeitung. Merkel’s governing conservative-liberal coalition at the time “has to put up with accusations of violating corporate property rights” because “everything had to be done quickly” after the Fukushima disaster, according to Knuf. “Taxpayers now will have to shoulder the bill of this fickleness” when the state compensates nuclear plant operators for their losses, he argues. The decision to phase-out nuclear power production remained the right thing to do but “the way it has been brought about was adventurous and had nothing to with the art of governing”.

Read more on Angela Merkel’s party positions on climate and energy for 2017 in this CLEW article.