Markus Söder is demanding new relief packages and rescue packages from the government in the fight against the energy crisis. The CSU boss also accuses the traffic light of neglecting the south. He says: “Unfortunately, funding was suddenly reduced, appointments canceled and commitments cancelled.”
Markus Söder’s collar is bursting. In the fight against an impending energy crisis, the Bavarian CSU Prime Minister is not moving fast enough at the federal level: “There is a lack of gas. It needs a replacement. Where is it?
Why doesn’t Germany have a contract with Qatar?” he asks, and already knows the main culprit: “The only thing that the Greens-led Ministry of Economic Affairs has decided is the new gas levy. So there is no substitute – the state is massively increasing the price of what little gas there is, at the expense of gas customers.”
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The legal situation is “clear: the federal government is responsible for the gas supply.” This is not the only reason why Söder is now calling for further acute financial measures in the FOCUS interview: “We urgently need rescue and relief packages! Rescue packages for municipal utilities and companies – and not just for Uniper.
In addition: commuter flat rate high, cold progression gone and compensation payments for the high energy prices for everyone in the population – including pensioners and students, ”demands Söder and already has a financing plan.
“The federal government has already taken on 300 billion euros in new debt this year. It’s easy to rearrange if necessary. And that’s it.” After all, it’s now “about the fate of millions of people in Germany”.
Söder’s credo: “Saving energy and taking a cold shower alone is not enough.” In his opinion, the massive help from Corona should “also apply now. Otherwise the middle of society and many normal earners will slip.”
In any case, the fronts are hardening between his Bavarian state government and the traffic light coalition. Söder feels from Scholz, Habeck
But then the thread broke,” complained the father of the country to FOCUS. “Suddenly, unfortunately, funding was reduced, appointments canceled and commitments canceled.” The state of Bavaria spent around 160 million euros on the G7 summit, for example.
“We only got half of that from Berlin,” says Söder, who recognizes the “intent” behind the recent actions. Söder’s suspicion: “The traffic light is a northern coalition that is about redistributing wealth in Germany. More north, less south. We won’t let that stand.”
After the lost federal election, more and more mask affairs of old CSU specials and personal dramas about the post of his general secretary, Markus Söder went into diving for some time. Now he’s attacking again – albeit initially from Bavaria, where he may have to win his most important state election in 2023.
He wants to look “forward” again, especially since the “leap of trust in the traffic light government disappeared surprisingly quickly,” he observes. “People’s skepticism is growing day by day.” In Berlin “there are more arguments than in the worst times of the grand coalition”. “The back and forth with nuclear power” alone shows that the traffic light is “more about ideology than about real reason,” Söder railed.
The 55-year-old from Upper Franconia no longer wants to know anything about the future model of a black-green government: “The Greens have deliberately decided in favor of a left-wing alliance and against a middle-class government.”
Now the traffic light is “held together by a new social matrix: the release of drugs, the possible abolition of paragraph 218 on abortion, an anti-discrimination officer who discriminates against citizens as ‘potatoes’, and a gender philosophy desired by the state.”
Söder’s conclusion: “We rely more on freedom and less on state coercion. Black-green makes sense if, in the end, the greens become blacker and not the blacks greener. The SPD has lost its brand essence through red-green.
Surf tip: You can find all the news about the corona pandemic in the FOCUS Online news ticker
His own chancellor ambitions are apparently done: “The chapter is closed,” said Söder in the conversation. If he were to be re-elected as prime minister next year, he could well imagine retiring after ten years at the end of the 2028 legislative period: “Basically, I think ten years is a good period for such an office.”
In the new FOCUS magazine you can read why Söder sees the Free State as a pioneer in renewable energy, what his current relationship with his old Union rival Armin Laschet looks like and which of his own talents he considers particularly underestimated in public.
