Air travel is increasingly the focus of the climate change debate. Affected are also politicians. From the point of view of the SPD environmental politician Carsten carrier the official flights of members of the Bundestag are to be compensated in future over climate protection measures.
It would be better to avoid flights altogether, said the chairman of the SPD in the Environment Committee of the news agency dpa. That is not always possible. Therefore, one wants to compensate for the greenhouse gases emitted by flights, as it is already practice in the Federal Government. Träger said his group colleague Johannes Fechner and he had won the necessary support in the Grand Coalition: "We will do that."
At most a "low single-digit million amount"
According to the carrier estimate, this would cost taxpayers at most a "low single-digit million amount". Not only the flights of the coalition factions, but all business flights of the deputies should be compensated - about which mechanism, was not yet very clear. Mr. Carrier said that he believed that this could already be dealt with in the course of the ongoing budget negotiations.
The Federal Government had recently come under fire because Chancellor Angela Merkel and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had traveled almost simultaneously to the US and had used two air force jets. The chancellery subsequently defended the separated flights. At first one would have tried to plan the trips together. However, there was a space problem in the plane of the Chancellor. So Kramp-Karrenbauer had to reschedule and flew separately to the USA.
Shortly before the incident, the Grand Coalition had announced a 22-page key issues paper that would advance climate protection in Germany and make the political goals for 2030 achievable (read more about the resolutions here). Among other things, the air traffic is to be reduced by higher ticket prices.