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Opponents Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (left) and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (right), with Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in between in December 2022 at the digital summit in Berlin
Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP
Climate protection in transport is becoming the central point of contention in the traffic light coalition.
The responsible Ministers Volker Wissing (FDP, Transport) and Robert Habeck (Climate, Greens) have been at war for weeks.
The accusation: The Liberal does not provide a viable program as he wants to close the huge gap in CO2 emissions in traffic.
And Wissing replies: he has already done that, now it is up to Habeck, the climate minister, to bring the appropriate regulations into the cabinet and into parliament.
The dispute erupts over the climate protection law, which was passed by the grand coalition in 2019. This stipulates that every ministry responsible for a sector must ensure that it meets its climate targets by 2030.
If the sector doesn't do it, then it has to be improved, and quickly.
This is particularly important in traffic.
Because there is a gap of 120 to 170 million tons of CO₂, too much of which will come from the exhaust of German vehicles, ships and airplanes by 2030.
There is currently only agreement between Wissing and Habeck on this range of numbers.
Not more.
But actually, decisions should already have been made.
The federal government must adopt a package of measures faster that closes the gap in climate protection in the transport sector.
This emerges from an elaboration by the scientific services of the Bundestag, which is available to SPIEGEL.
The wording "as soon as possible" in the Climate Protection Act means that this "is to be carried out while putting other important concerns on the back burner," it says.
A period of six months is "understandable".
It had previously become known that the scientific services considered the government's previous actions to be a violation of the law.
The lack of implementation of the climate targets in traffic in 2021 was already confirmed in March by the Federal Environment Agency.
An expert council declared the measures subsequently submitted by Volker Wissing's Ministry of Transport to be insufficient.
Now the federal government wants to deal with the question this spring.
The Union faction commissioned the opinion of the scientific services.
Its chairman in the climate and energy committee, Thomas Gebhart, sees the government as having an obligation to finally present an emergency program.
"The chancellor has long been challenged here," said Gebhart.
Wissing is committed to relaxing the strict rules of the Climate Protection Act.
Habeck insists that there will be no softening until the federal government's immediate climate protection program is in place.
At their meeting this week, the Greens group brought up a number of measures, including a change in vehicle tax and company car taxation in addition to the speed limit.
These are to be changed in such a way that the purchase of climate-damaging combustion cars becomes more expensive and climate-friendly electric cars become more attractive.
The FDP rejects such measures.
