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Demonstrators at the Garzweiler II opencast mine on November 12, 2022
Photo: David Young / dpa
Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach is against delaying a possible eviction of the climate activists in Lützerath - instead, it should be scheduled for this winter.
"From the point of view of the police, nothing is gained if there are no more evictions in the current clearing season," Weinspach told SPIEGEL.
An evacuation of the village this winter would have to be completed by the end of February 2023, when the clearing season ends, in which trees for opencast lignite mining may be felled.
The chief of police does not think much of postponing the eviction to the clearing season at the end of 2023.
“Then there would be a risk that we would end up in a permanent conflict,” says Weinspach.
The number of crimes committed by local activists against RWE's infrastructure is currently increasing.
"If Lützerath were not to be cleared until the end of 2023, we would have a constantly evolving operational situation by then, which is not a good perspective for the police."
Most recently, Weinspach explained in the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” that the time window for an eviction had already closed by the end of December 2022.
Eight weeks of preparation
"If an eviction is still wanted in this clearing season, that would still be possible from mid-January," he tells SPIEGEL.
However, this time window will also close “in a few days”.
The Aachen police, who would be responsible for the operation, need around eight weeks of preparation time.
So far, says Weinspach, the police have not received any requests for enforcement from the responsible authorities.
Such a request would be the basis for a police clearance operation and could be initiated by the district government of Arnsberg or the city of Erkelenz.
The police assume that almost 1,000 climate activists will oppose an evacuation of Lützerath.
According to Weinspach, the deployment would take around four weeks.
Several thousand police officers would probably be involved - similar to 2018, when the Hambach Forest was cleared.
The operation at that time was later classified as illegal by the administrative court in Cologne.
The village of Lützerath borders on the Garzweiler II lignite mine, which is operated by the energy company RWE.
At the beginning of October, the federal government, the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia and RWE announced that they wanted to bring forward the phase-out of coal in the Rhenish mining area to 2030.
Lützerath, it was said, still had to be dredged.