Outgoing German economy and climate minister Robert Habeck today voiced his fear of a climate policy "regression" under a new government following Sunday's federal elections, as right-of-centre CDU candidate for chancellorship Friedrich Merz is likely to form a government with outgoing federal chancellor Olaf Scholz's left-of-centre SPD.
Habeck, who was also the Greens' candidate for chancellorship, had hoped to join the government as a junior partner to the CDU and its Bavarian sister party the CDU. But a CDU/CSU-Green Party combination would lack a majority, and the Greens will not be needed as they had hoped, until the final results came out last night, to provide a CDU/CSU-SPD alliance with a stable parliamentary majority.
A CDU/CSU-SPD coalition government is one that "dodges problems" and "lacks a willingness to act", Habeck said at a press conference in Berlin, pointing to the years of CDU/CSU-SPD coalition governments with their perceived air of stagnation and focus on "management", coupled with a lack of "innovation".
"Saying I'm concerned is putting it politely," Habeck said. He warned that demands by the CDU/CSU to postpone the EU-mandated phase-out of combustion engine cars by 2035 will make it difficult for Germany to reach its climate targets.
Habeck also flagged the pledges made by the CDU/CSU group to at least dilute, if not abolish, the buildings energy law and its renewable share mandates.
And he pointed out suggestions made by the CDU/CSU to soften climate targets, by aligning Germany's ambitious climate target to the EU's. Germany aims to reach greenhouse gas (GHG) neutrality by 2045, the EU by 2050.
The issue of climate policy played hardly any role during the electoral campaign, and it was similarly barely broached on Sunday evening as party leaders convened in different formats to discuss the results and the way forward.
Party leaders, including from the Green Party, were mostly focused on addressing the need for far greater investments in defence given the current geopolitical situation, and on boosting economic growth. The issues of cost of living and illegal migration were also major topics.
Merz has pledged to "quickly" form a government. With the pro-business FDP kicked out of parliament on Sunday, outgoing foreign minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party called on the CDU/CSU to give up its resistance against reforming the constitutional debt brake, thereby allowing the necessary investments to tackle the different challenges faced by the country.
The FDP had left the outgoing government in November last year, not least owing to ongoing fights over the budget, with the FDP opposed to any easing of the debt brake, a change necessitating a two-thirds majority in parliament. The debt brake and budget constraints had abruptly ended a range of climate and energy policy support programmes under the outgoing government.
Climate had played a bigger role in the run-up to the preceding federal elections of September 2021. But the relevance of climate policy diminished over the year then too, with the Greens in early 2021 polling second ahead of the SPD. They came out third in the 2021 elections, and were fourth this year.
