A new state parliament will be elected in Lower Saxony on October 9th. SPD Prime Minister Stephan Weil leads in election polls ahead of his CDU coalition partner Bernd Althusmann. The election campaign is now entering its final round. All news about the Lower Saxony elections in the Newsticker.
Friday, October 7th, 7:55 a.m.: The CDU top candidate for the Lower Saxony state elections, Bernd Althusmann, has asked the federal government to act on the question of the further course in nuclear power. “The federal government should have acted a long time ago,” he said on Friday on ZDF’s “Morgenmagazin”. He would have expected an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act from the Prime Ministers’ Conference: “You would have had to order fuel rods in Canada and store them at the three locations of the nuclear power plants in order to have a secure power supply here at least for the period of the crisis until the end of 2024.” In Lower Saxony A new state parliament will be elected on October 9th.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) recently said that according to the current status, his ministry assumes that the “reserve” will be drawn and that the Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim nuclear power plants will continue to be connected to the grid in the first quarter of 2023. Like the Emsland nuclear power plant in Lower Saxony, they should actually be taken off the grid at the end of the year.
Althusmann said the three remaining nuclear power plants together provided a secure power supply for ten million people. It’s about getting through the winter safely. Regarding the question of saving energy, the politician said he was trying to convince his family “that it’s also possible with less light”.
Thursday, October 06, 2022, 8:41 a.m .: Ex-Prime Minister Gerhard Glogowski (SPD) hopes that the grand coalition in Lower Saxony will end soon. “I think it’s quite good if the CDU goes back into opposition,” said the 79-year-old of the German Press Agency. He constantly looks at polls and suffers or rejoices with the SPD.
“It’s looking pretty good at the moment, I’m happy about that,” he said, referring to polls before the election on Sunday, which often see the Social Democrats ahead. “If the CDU governs again, I will endure it as a democrat,” said Glogowski.
Under Gerhard Schröder, he was the interior minister and deputy prime minister. However, he only remained head of government for a short time: around a year after taking office, he resigned in 1999 after allegations of financial privileges from companies. Today he is part of a “traffic light family”: He himself is still a member of the SPD, his son is active in local politics for the Greens and his wife is a member of the Bundestag for the FDP.
2:29 p.m .: Before the state elections in Lower Saxony on Sunday, the CDU chairman Friedrich Merz accused Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) of leadership weakness. Merz said on Wednesday at an election campaign event in the Diepholz district that Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) had been arguing publicly for weeks. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is not just a problem for these two, it is a problem for the Chancellor,” said Merz. “You can’t lead a government like that.” The CDU chairman said that as Chancellor he would not have allowed it.
At the event, Merz warned that a poor design of the energy price brake could lead to a legitimacy problem for the federal government and could also fall back on politics in general. “Then everyone will point the finger at us and say: They are not even able to solve such a problem.” At the end of September, the traffic light coalition announced a new “defense shield” of up to 200 billion euros to protect consumers and to prop up businesses because of rising energy prices. The opposition leader in the Bundestag offered the federal government his cooperation on the energy price brake. “I don’t want any partisan arguments at this point,” said Merz.
Wednesday, October 5th, 2022, 8:51 a.m .: Before the state elections in Lower Saxony, Die Linke is promoting the introduction of a state-wide 365-euro ticket for local transport. The parliamentary group will submit a corresponding application in the first 100 days after the election if it succeeds in entering the state parliament on Sunday, according to a ten-point program available to the German Press Agency. According to this, the 365-euro ticket should be a first step “towards free local public transport”.
The program also includes calling for an additional holiday on March 8, International Women’s Day, “as a feminist sign and to reduce working hours”, hiring at least 1000 additional teachers by February 1, 2023, annual investment in the hospitals of at least 250 million euros and a ban on power cuts.
In some points, the left is in line with campaign promises made by the SPD and the Greens, such as the establishment of a Lower Saxony fund for more public investment, the increase in salaries for primary, secondary and secondary school teachers or the establishment of a state-owned housing association. The aim is to promote the ten-point program to the SPD and Greens from within the opposition, according to the left. On Wednesday (2:00 p.m.), the leader of the Bundestag parliamentary group, Dietmar Bartsch, and the top candidates Jessica Kaußen and Lars Leopold want to present the details in Hanover.
According to the latest polls, the left would fail at the five percent hurdle with 3 to 4 percent. So far, she was only represented in the Lower Saxony state parliament from 2008 to 2013.
You can read older news about the Lower Saxony elections on the next page
