After the expert council for climate issues warned that the traffic light coalition would soften the climate protection law, the Greens are threatening to block the reform project in the Bundestag. “The Expert Council rightly points out that strict requirements must be met when the coalition committee changes the climate protection law,” said the transport policy spokesman for the Greens, Stephan Gelbhaar, the editorial network Germany (RND).
Germany should not “violate the legally binding Paris climate targets with its eyes open or even break the Basic Law,” added the Green politician, referring to the Paris climate agreement.
Greens do not want to agree to unconstitutional reform of the climate protection law
At a marathon meeting at the end of March, the coalition leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP agreed to amend the climate protection law. According to this, the strict annual sector targets for greenhouse gas emissions, for example for transport and the building sector, are to be relaxed. In the future, it should be possible to compensate for missing targets by overachieving in one sector in another.
“The Federal Constitutional Court has made it very clear that too vague sector targets or unclear CO2 reduction targets are unconstitutional,” emphasized Gelbhaar. His party will not agree to a reform of the climate protection law, “which will be cashed in again immediately in Karlsruhe”.
Chairman of the Climate Expert Council continues to call for sharp annual sector targets
On Monday, the chairman of the Climate Expert Council, Hans-Martin Henning, expressly advocated setting “year-specific targets for each sector” for the permitted amount of emissions as before. Vice-Chairman Brigitte Knopf emphasized that without concrete goals, politics would have a “credibility problem”. From the experts’ point of view, a change would probably also violate the groundbreaking climate protection judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court from 2021.
