Internal police reports on Lützerath: 14 federal states are sending emergency services to clear the area

Enlarge image

Police officers on January 2, 2023 in Lützerath: Insiders describe the deployment of forces as "massive".

Photo: Thomas Banneyer / dpa

For the upcoming evacuation of the village of Lützerath in the Rhenish lignite mining area, the NRW police are getting help from emergency services from all over Germany.

This is the result of internal reports from the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior and the police headquarters in Aachen, which are available to SPIEGEL.

Shortly before Christmas, the ministry sent a "request for forces" to the interior ministries of the other countries.

It says that the company's own forces are not sufficient to "manage the operational situation" from the second calendar week of 2023.

There is therefore a »need for support«.

In the meantime, all federal states except Hesse have apparently agreed to support the NRW police in clearing the settlement.

Insiders describe the deployment of forces as »massive«.

The energy company RWE would like to excavate Lützerath for its Garzweiler II opencast mine, and several hundred climate activists are currently occupying the town.

According to the reports, police officers and equipment from other federal states are to be deployed in Lützerath from next week.

Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hamburg, for example, will each send a hundred riot police, Berlin and Lower Saxony three.

Between 10 and 15 hundreds every day

A high-altitude intervention team comes from Brandenburg.

Bavaria also sends mounted police to Lützerath, water cannons come from Lower Saxony and a toilet truck from Thuringia.

In addition to emergency services, the Federal Police also provides a thermal imaging vehicle and a squadron of service dogs for the evacuation.

In one of its reports, however, the NRW Ministry of the Interior points out that "the forces on offer" have so far "not completely" covered the need.

The federal states and the federal government are "asked to examine further support options".

Starting next week, the Ministry of the Interior in Lützerath wants to deploy between 10 and 15 police units every day.

The Aachen police are assuming in a "situation orientation" with a view to the protests and actions of "a number of participants in the mid four-digit range".

There is already "a mobilization across the entire federal territory, possibly also in other European countries" among the climate activists.

The activists are expected to cause "considerable disruption" to the clearance work, especially due to left-wing extremist militants.

One also assumes small group actions at night.

There had already been several clashes between police officers and climate activists in Lützerath last week, and there were injuries on both sides.