State will have to spend “several billions of euros” to support coal regions – finance minister

German finance minister Olaf Scholz said it is “perfectly clear” that the German government will have to invest much more money to support coal regions than the 1.5 billion euros earmarked so far in the current budget, writes the Tagesspiegel. "We will have to spend several billions more over the next 20 years,” said Scholz, calling for specific post-coal plans for the affected regions. “In my view we have to be specific: let’s build this road, that railway, an industrial park here,” said the Social Democrat in Berlin. Scholz did not comment on possible compensation payments for coal power plant operators, writes the Tagesspiegel.
In a separate article carried by Welt Online, the news agency dpa reports that interior minister Horst Seehofer said it is his task to develop “substitute solutions” for the affected regions. “It is our duty to give priority to helping where we ourselves trigger a political structural change,” said Seehofer after a meeting with Reiner Haseloff, state premier of Saxony-Anhalt.

Read the Tagesspiegel article in German here and the dpa piece in German here.

For background, read CLEW’s Commission watch – Managing Germany’s coal phase-out.