Climate and digitalisation Germany's key challenges of the future - Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said protecting the climate and digitalisation are the two key challenges that Germany faces in the future. Her comments in the general debate on the federal budget in the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, echoed European Commission President-elect and former German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen's plans to make a European Green Deal and the digital age the bloc's focus of the coming years. "Europe must be a pioneer in climate action as well as a motor of the implementation of the Paris Agreement," added Merkel. The chancellor emphasised the responsibility of industrial nations in protecting the climate and took a stab at those who deny human-made climate change: "We have to make the basic decision of whether we want to risk saying 'this is not made by humans and maybe it all goes away' or whether we are of the opinion that there is so much evidence that humans have something to do with it that we are obliged to act in view of future generations."

Merkel reiterated that her so-called climate cabinet would agree on key proposals for Germany to reach its climate targets in a meeting on 20 September. After years of booming renewables expansion, Germany's planned transition to a low-carbon, nuclear-free economy – the famed Energiewende – has slowed in recent years. Merkel has assigned the group of ministers with responsibilities in key climate policy fields to decide necessary legislation to reach the 2030 climate targets, as promised in the 2018 grand coalition government treaty.