Today we are dealing with the constitutional court in Potsdam, which is ruling on a parity law, with an unusual visit to the Chancellery and with a government initiative in the fight against the right.
Greta with Angela
It was almost a year ago when the two women met for the first time. On the sidelines of the UN climate summit in New York, Angela Merkel and Greta Thunberg sat down on two brown leather armchairs, the Chancellor, as it looked in the photo, was much more turned towards the climate activist than the other way around.
A few minutes later, Thunberg gave an angry speech, the outrage included all politicians, including Angela Merkel - how dare you?
Today Merkel and Thunberg see each other again, this time in Berlin. The Chancellor invited her and three other activists, Luisa Neubauer from Germany, Anuna de Wever van der Heyden and Adélaïde Charlier from Belgium. Around 90 minutes are allotted for the meeting in the Chancellery, a special climate summit, with women only.
Merkel has often shown the great respect she has for the climate activists . Without "Fridays for Future", as she once described it, without the pressure from the streets, the federal government would probably not have passed its climate package so quickly.
Luisa Neubauer (2nd from left) and Greta Thunberg (3rd from left) at a "Fridays for Future" demonstration (March 2019)
Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty ImagesMerkel also tends towards pragmatism , climate issues are not excluded. When the Union and SPD got caught up in the nightly debate on the climate package over the level of the CO2 price, it was the Chancellor who, looking at the clock, pushed for a quick solution and finally agreed to the low value of 10 euros per ton. Only after pressure from the Greens was it later increased to 25 euros.
It will therefore be exciting to see which of the activists' lofty demands the pragmatic chancellor will adopt, whether there is anything for her at all. The four women already indicated in a guest post in which direction the conversation could go.
"We will tell the Chancellor that she has to face the climate crisis - especially now that Germany is holding the EU Council Presidency," they write. "Europe has a historic responsibility to act. The EU and Great Britain are responsible for 22 percent of cumulative global emissions. Only the US has emitted more." They call for emissions to be reduced "drastically", to be brought to zero as quickly as possible, in order to subsequently achieve "negative emissions".
One sentence in the post is remarkable. "The climate and environmental crisis has never been treated as a crisis," write the activists. It can be understood as a call to the so far successful manager of the corona crisis: Those who manage to keep the virus largely in check should also be able to contain the greenhouse gases. Angela Merkel would not have much time left for that, still a good year.
The guest post by the "Fridays for Future" activists
Unconstitutional parity
Former President of the Bundestag Rita Süssmuth
Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpaThe proportion of women among the members of the German Bundestag is 30 percent, in the Union faction it is only 20 percent - politics has a serious problem for women .
It has been discussed for years, it has remained unchanged for years. The Thuringian state government wanted to do something and passed a parity law, according to which parties in state elections have to alternate between women and men in their lists. The law didn't last long, when the country's Constitutional Court declared it unconstitutional.
In Brandenburg, too, the state parliament passed such a law, an action was taken here too, and the constitutional court in Potsdam is negotiating it today.
If the judges should also come to a negative vote, then a promising instrument for the advancement of women would be done and the parties would be back at the beginning.
Rita Süssmuth , the grande dame of the modern CDU, recently summed it up in SPIEGEL as follows: "You feel like you've been thrown back into the fifties."
Six female federal ministers on men's power and quotas: Why women so rarely prevail
The invisible committee
Horst Seehofer
Photo: Hannibal Hanschke / AFPWhenever Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer was last asked about right-wing activities in society, he responded with a confession. Right-wing extremism is the "greatest threat to security in Germany," said Seehofer, pointing out that combating this threat has now become a top priority. On March 18, the cabinet decided to set up a cabinet committee "to combat right-wing extremism and racism". That sounded good.
What happened in those five months? Not much.
Today, 40 clubs and associations that deal with right-wing extremism, racism or anti-Semitism are to formulate their expectations. It is a closed hearing, another round, but with fewer participants, is to meet in September at the Chancellery. Where the committee wants to go, what it is concentrating on, none of the parties involved can say exactly. In any case, there is not much time left here either, just a good year.
When right-wing extremists wear the uniform of the state
The good news of the day ...
PhD student working on samples for coronavirus research (symbol image)
Photo: Marcel Kusch / dpa... are new studies on Covid-19 . They suggest that immunity against the coronavirus lasts far longer than previously thought. "The antibodies are falling, but they remain in what appears to be a stable low," says Deepta Bhattacharya of the University of Arizona, co-author of a recent study on the subject. It is believed that B cells in the bone marrow are responsible for producing these antibodies. "The reaction looks completely permanent," says the scientist.
So far, a short period of immunity had been assumed, which would also have called into question the sustainable effectiveness of a future vaccine. At least that's how it sounds better.
The latest news from the night
Obama gives Trump a damning job reference: So far, Barack Obama has been reluctant to directly criticize his successor in office - he became clear at this party conference. His speech turned into a settlement with Donald Trump
Palestinians demonstrate against rapprochement between Israel and the Emirates: after the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, 2,000 people protested on the streets of the West Bank. There was a rare alliance
"They obviously like me": A cult of democratic pedophiles and cannibals - and a US president who fights it heroically: this is how the QAnon conspiracy can be outlined. Donald Trump apparently has no problem with this nonsense
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I wish you a sunny day!
Your Martin Knobbe
