AreaReadb hereopen the video transcript
Burning barricades on one of the access roads to the brown coal village of Lützerath in North Rhine-Westphalia.
Police and climate activists meet on the outskirts of the settlement.
The fate of Lützerath has been at the center of violent conflicts between politicians and climate protectionists for a long time - and is linked to the debates about phasing out coal.
Lützerath is now fully owned by the energy company RWE and is to be excavated shortly.
The climate activists want to prevent this and have occupied the abandoned houses.
Florian Özcan, spokesman »Lützerath stays«
'Right here today the police started their evacuation preparations. You started building a road here with RWE to bring heavy equipment in here. And with that you could say that the evacuation has officially started here or the evacuation phase. Then there is also a bit of a surprise and that was very spontaneous. We didn't expect that road construction work would start today and that the police would also turn up here with heavy equipment.«
Andreas Müller, police spokesman
'We found out this morning that there were natural reactions when the police presence was detected. We have made it clear and transparent that we will be there from the beginning of January to set up police logistics. That's exactly what we started with. In the course of this, the access road to Lützerath has now been barricaded. We found burning straw bales and barricades there this morning. We have to clear these in order to be able to build up our logistics, in order to be able to build up our infrastructure. However, we would like to emphasize at this point that this is not the beginning of the evacuation of Lützerath.«
The village of Lützerath borders on the Garzweiler II brown coal mine, which is operated by the energy company RWE.
At the beginning of October 2022, the federal government announced that the phase-out of coal in the Rhenish lignite mining area was to be brought forward to 2030.
Lützerath, it was said, still had to be dredged.
Lukas Eberle, DER SPIEGEL
»At the moment there are around 100, 200 activists living in Lützerath. This number is expected to increase significantly in the coming days. The activists are now also out to mobilize. They make appeals: Everyone come to Lützerath, show your presence, help us to prevent the eviction or at least make it as difficult as possible. And now you're trying to get as many people as possible to come to Lützerath. Yes, that could be a few 100, maybe a few 1000. It's difficult to say, but of course it also depends on how the weather will be, whether it will remain as it is now or whether it will be really, really cold again. This could then also complicate the evacuation operation or maybe even delay it. If it gets really below zero, then the devices can no longer work properly.
RWE announced that three country roads near Lützerath were permanently closed on Monday.
According to the police and climate protectors, officials banned car trips to Lützerath on Monday.
The place could only be reached on foot.
An eviction is expected in January.
Lukas Eberle, DER SPIEGEL »You don't have that much time, that could still be a decisive factor. So you have to be finished by mid-February at the latest, because then the season will also be over in March and then no more preparatory measures for opencast mining can be taken, no trees can be felled. That means you're under a bit of time pressure, which could still be a factor. So if the activists really manage to delay all this by the end of February, then RWE and then the police would have to wait again until October before they could get back there, and then a lot of time would have passed. This is perhaps another option for the activists to prevent the eviction. But other than that, I'd say it's more likely that the place will soon be history."
