Bavaria is bankrupt in terms of energy policy: Söder is caught in the Putin trap

Created: 03/10/2022, 06:20

By: Georg Anastasiadis

Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder in January 2020 on a visit to Moscow with Vladimir Putin;

a commentary by Merkur Editor-in-Chief Georg Anastasiadis.

© Maxim Shemetov/dpa/Klaus Haag

Like his predecessors Stoiber and Seehofer, Markus Söder celebrated the geostrategic liaison with Moscow and relied too much on Russian gas supplies in terms of energy policy.

Now Bavaria is caught in the Putin trap, comments Georg Anastasiadis.

Munich – Would that have happened to Franz Josef Strauss?

Since Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian Prime Ministers have made pilgrimages to Moscow more often than to Altötting, allowed themselves to be ensnared by Putin and returned the favor with addresses of allegiance to the Kremlin chief - most embarrassingly Horst Seehofer at the height of Moscow's bombing terror in Syria.

Huge amounts of Russian gas flowed in the opposite direction.

Drunken by Putin's flattery, the three CSU leaders celebrated a geostrategic liaison that blinded them to the dictator's true intentions: trusting in Putin's gas, the Seehofer/Söder duo got out of the nuclear power plants built by Strauss and casually dumped the built wind turbines and thwarted the construction of high-voltage lines that could have transported electricity from the windy north to the south.

Ukraine war: Bavaria sits like no other German state in Putin's gas trap

Now Putin has dropped his mask - and Bavaria is sitting in its gas trap like no other German state.

In addition to the lack of nuclear power plants, wind turbines and overhead power lines, there is also the fatal fact that liquefied gas brought by ship hardly ever reaches the far-flung Free State.

The neglected development of decentralized "freedom energies" is likely to take some time.

Truly an energy policy tour de force by the long-term governing CSU!

Her fatal tendency towards populism became her undoing.

The Bavarian rulers didn't want to subject their citizens to ugly wind turbines, annoying electricity pylons or even the terrifying sight of a nuclear reactor.

And now?

Söder wanted to win the state election with the bitter complaint that the Berlin traffic lights only had stones left for the white-blue Free State.

Now the CSU boss must hope that the reluctant Greens will graciously allow him to continue operating the nuclear reactors.

The opposition's election-campaign malice that the CSU, of all people, which is infallible on Bavarian issues, gambled away the state's energy security, is included free of charge.

A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis