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Habeck and Özdemir at the party conference of the Greens in Berlin
Photo:
Frederic Kern / Future Image / IMAGO
Who gets which ministerial post from the Greens and who goes empty-handed is currently causing a lot of irritation and anger among the Greens.
Now the party chairman Robert Habeck has defended the personnel decisions for the future traffic light government.
The designated Minister of Agriculture, Cem Özdemir, is "a gifted communicator," which is particularly important in the agriculture department, said Habeck.
Özdemir knows how to "bring different interests together," said Habeck of the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung".
This is an important skill for the agriculture department: "Agriculture is an area in which different expectations clash very hard," as he knows from his own experience in Schleswig-Holstein - Habeck was Agriculture Minister there for six years.
"Minister in the German department in general"
Özdemir has "in his political career always worked primarily on the reconciliation of economy and ecology."
Habeck emphasized that "there is hardly any other area where the two belong together as closely" as in agriculture.
Özdemir's nomination is also a figurehead for the entire Green Party: For the first time, a child of a Turkish immigrant family will become German Federal Minister - "and not in an area that is connected with migration issues, but in the most German department, if you will."
The Green leader also justified the disregard of the two parliamentary group chairmen: "Toni Hofreiter and Katrin Göring-Eckardt did great services and successfully led the parliamentary group for years," he said.
"But when you have a lot of good people and only a limited number of departments, the selection is always a painful process that sometimes requires difficult decisions." Hofreiter had previously been acted as Minister of Agriculture, Göring-Eckardt as Minister of Family.
Özdemir announces tougher laws
Meanwhile, Özdemir announced that he would like to introduce stricter requirements for the meat industry.
“Anyone who wants to eat meat is welcome to do so.
Whoever produces meat is allowed to do so, but taking animal welfare and climate protection into account and not at the expense of our environment, "said the designated Minister of Agriculture of the" Stuttgarter Zeitung "and the" Stuttgarter Nachrichten ".
For him, it's about the farms and the people who produce high-quality food every day - "not about industrial factory farming that sells animals as cheap goods."
Özdemir held out the prospect of binding meat husbandry: "We will also ensure that investment funding is geared towards good husbandry conditions in the stables in the future," said the Green politician, who has been a vegetarian since his youth.
Özdemir told "SPIEGEL" that he wanted to promote climate protection in agriculture.
"In the past it was always like this in the cabinet: the environment minister actually set very good climate and environmental goals, then the then economics minister, the transport minister or the agriculture minister at the time came and trashed climate and species protection." He'll change that.
sbo / dpa
