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Saxony's Prime Minister Kretschmer
Photo: CLEMENS BILAN / EPA
"We have special interests in Central Germany that jobs are not simply lost and that we get a shock in the region," said Michael Kretschmer (CDU) on Sunday in the program "MDR Aktuell".
Kretschmer feels responsible for the employees in the central German lignite mining areas of the Lausitz, which are largely located in Saxony.
In the ARD program »Report from Berlin«, Kretschmer also said that there would be laws and agreements for the planned end to coal-fired power generation by 2038, »they must not be terminated so quickly now. Whom should one still believe something? Whom should the citizen still believe? «For Lusatia, where as of 2019 several thousand people still work in opencast mining and mining and in power generation, any earlier exit is a coup de grace. "We need the years up to '38 to build up infrastructure in order to attract new jobs." Kretschmer believes it is impossible to get out of nuclear energy and coal-fired power at the same time and to keep the country competitive.
He hoped, he said on ARD, that Olaf Scholz would assert himself as Chancellor on the issue against the Greens, "that the SPD will not break its word here and that the FDP will not break its word" either.
In their exploratory paper, the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, which are currently negotiating the formation of a joint federal government, agreed, among other things, that the coal phase-out "ideally" should be achieved by 2030 and that the expansion of renewable energies should be significantly promoted.
So far, the coal phase-out is planned by 2038 at the latest.
bor / dpa
