The meeting between Federal Climate Minister Robert Habeck and Prime Minister Markus Söder was not just about wind power, but also about campaign weapons with a view to the 2023 state elections, commented Merkur Editor-in-Chief Georg Anastasiadis.
From a Bavarian perspective, when the Federal Climate Minister travels to Munich, that deserves at least as much attention as the Foreign Minister's visit to Moscow - after all, the aim here too is to prevent the outbreak of hostilities.
At least that seems to have worked yesterday, if you believe Markus Söder.
At the "energy summit", which the CSU staged like a state visit, the Bavarian Prime Minister praised his guest Robert Habeck for the fact that the leader of the Greens had not yet left the path of dialogue in the dispute over the expansion of wind power, i.e. the abolition of the Bavarian 10H - Do not instruct distance rule from Berlin.
Energy policy could be decisive in the 2023 state election
Uff, wind turbine war averted at the last minute?
That sounds almost funny, but it cannot hide one thing: the Greens and the CSU will be the main opponents in the state elections in autumn 2023.
And energy policy could be the deciding factor this time.
In the dispute over wind power and the white-blue 10H rule, both Habeck and Söder flashed their campaign weapons yesterday.
Habeck demands “ecological patriotism” from the CSU – and indirectly accuses it of only ever talking about the energy turnaround, but thwarting it on the spot.
That applies to the CSU, which competes with the Greens for the modern urban electoral milieu.
But even Söder, who initially courted the eco-party as a prospective chancellor candidate and is now attacking it, wields a sharp sword:
He wants to brand the Scholz-Habeck-Lindner traffic light as a government that acts against the interests of southern Germany and imposes its will on them.
He is already eagerly quoting Gerhard Schröder, who as the red-green chancellor of Bavaria once threatened “stones instead of bread”.
