Welfare state, energy policy, security: Germany is being subjected to a reality check as a result of Putin’s war. It’s unpleasant, but it can move our country forward.
Today is Wednesday, the Federal Cabinet meets on Wednesdays, Olaf Scholz is on vacation in the Allgäu, so Robert Habeck (deputy) is now Federal Chancellor. He could send the tanks to Ukraine, which Scholz absolutely does not want to send. Or opt out of the nuclear phase-out. Or collect the expensive social reforms. Of course he doesn’t. And why not? Because Germany is not Russia, for example.
And the German Federal Chancellor is not the sole ruler and the owner of the authority to issue guidelines does not have the license to simply pull a blank. The chancellor doesn’t even have the authority to set guidelines for the SPD, which he’s not the leader of. Not even about the Greens, and certainly not about the FDP, which anyway comes from a completely different corner.
Robert Habeck has even less to say, even if he is allowed to have Chancellor photos taken of himself. It’s really a pity, many people may think, because the gas minister, pardon me: federal economics and climate minister, is the most popular in the ranks of ministers. But even Habeck must not simply extend the operating times for the nuclear power plants, whether he wants to or not, which is no longer really known.
German politics is in a turning point mode, and the owner of the policy authority is responsible for this – in Russia. As a shadowy figure, Vladimir Putin is currently writing Agenda 2022, and maybe there will even be good news in the end: when the Germans experience what the British once dubbed the “finest hour” – their best hours.
Then there would suddenly be a great consensus across the country, which the polls are already indicating, for example, when they say that the citizens are convinced of the necessary help for Ukraine and are even willing to cut back on what they are used to. According to those responsible for energy, seven to eight percent of energy is already being saved. This happens without any new laws, just insight is enough. If that’s not good news.
If a “peace party” can send weapons into a war zone, why shouldn’t an anti-nuclear party keep nuclear power plants running longer? There are enough reasons – “European solidarity”, because German nuclear power, what a turn of events, can currently help the French, who have half their nuclear reactors under maintenance.
Or because, as a German, you can’t expect a, let’s say, Spaniard to help you out energetically, even though he hasn’t become blindly and greedily dependent on Russian gas like the Federal Republicans. Why should Spain help Germany with energy if Germany doesn’t do everything it can to help itself first?
Also the counter-argument from the Brokdorf days – dear children, more than 40 years ago, some of your parents barricaded themselves against the police in a suburb of Itzehoe to prevent a nuclear power plant – they always believe it is a “high-risk technology”. fewer people.
For example, those from the TÜV, which not only declare the continued operation of nuclear power plants that have been shut down themselves to be possible, but also to be safe. Or the French President, who wants to build six new nuclear reactors at once. Or the Belgians and Dutch, who are extending their operating times or are also planning new reactors, right next to Germany.
Greens move slower on nuclear power than on arms supply, but they move. The substitute chancellor is having all arguments checked again and if the debate continues as dynamically as it is now, he will not have so many arguments to justify in about four weeks why the last three German nuclear reactors will also be shut down after Christmas.
Christian Lindner is fighting a lonely guerrilla war on the third political front line. Social Democrats, who from Lindner’s point of view do not like to forego spending money on social causes, would like to increase Hartz IV, pay more housing benefit and blow up the debt brake. That’s a lot all at once, and it doesn’t really fit in with the rampant inflation when the state is pumping more and more money into the market.
The social politicians are fighting hard – against Lindner. Matching the glossy photos of his Sylt wedding together with a Porsche (it couldn’t have been invented better), it was not at all accidentally launched that the upper liberal was planning a social cut. And in terms of job promotion. That was a gross foul and the Social Democratic Minister of Labour, who was partly responsible for the alleged clear-cutting, let the furiously attacked cabinet colleague wither unmoved in the Sylt sun.
But in the end the punchline still belonged to Lindner, since the social funds could be reduced at all because they had not been recalled at all. From which the Federal Minister of Finance has just formed a nice mnemonic, namely in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”: The quality of the welfare state “does not depend on the amount of its expenditure, but on the accuracy of its measures”.
Seasoned social politicians – of all camps – are honored by such a sentence. They are calibrated to the fact that more money always helps more, and always to the right people. From their point of view, anyone who counters this, even if it is with facts, is someone who is getting married on Sylt.
Warlord Putin forces the Germans to do a reality check. It’s worked before in the military, and it looks like it’s going to work in energy, too. And now the last taboo is beginning to falter – the unchecked growth of the welfare state.
You can see all of this in a positive way. For real.
