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Clearing of Lützerath: Trenches open up for the Greens

Clearing of Lützerath: Trenches open up for the Greens

The “Year of Climate Protection” begins for the Greens with a crucial test. The youngsters are loudly criticizing the eviction of Lützerath, while the party leadership is trying to do a balancing act.

Some call it so, others so. Robert Habeck says: “That touches me too”. That is the case with everyone in his party. “But still we have to explain what is right.”

What is meant is the evacuation of Lützerath, which was already in full swing when the green climate protection minister explained what he thought was right on Wednesday evening. “And it was right – unfortunately – to ward off the gas shortage, an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional power generation from lignite – and to bring forward the phase-out of coal.”

Dilemma for Vice Chancellor Habeck

This “compromise” – Lützerath will be excavated, other villages will be spared, and the phase-out of coal in North Rhine-Westphalia will be brought forward to 2030 – leaves deep rifts in the Greens too, but according to Habeck it represents a foreseeable “line” under lignite-fired power generation in Germany “In this respect – with great respect for the climate movement – in my opinion the place is the wrong symbol.”

For the Green Youth, Lützerath is more than that. That is what their federal spokesman Timon Dzienus, who is taking part in the protests against the eviction, says. Him that the protest in Lützerath was dismissed as a symbol and thus delegitimized.

Still on Wednesday morning, which shows him with a clenched fist. “We are defending Lützerath,” he writes. Later he criticized a , meaning the energy company RWE and the police, until he . “But the protest will continue,” assures Dzienus.

Green offspring confronting the parent party

The offspring on a confrontational course with the parent party, protests from their own clientele: “It hurts too,” admits Habeck. He had that “compromise” with the energy company RWE, together with the Green Economics Minister Mona Neubar from North Rhine-Westphalia. At the time, both defended the plans as a necessity, on the one hand, and on the other hand.

Its own base objects and protests against the eviction, . Meanwhile, concerns are growing about alienating an important group of voters.

“We have to keep in touch with the climate movement, even in critical situations,” says Sven-Christian Kindler, budget spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag. Accordingly, he is demanding that his party deal with the activists’ demands in a more self-critical manner. “In view of the drama of the climate catastrophe, I understand the peaceful protest in Lützerath. That’s legitimate,” he told the newspaper. And: “We have to become even more fundamental and tougher in climate policy.”

In an , addressed to Habeck and Neubaur, several Greens criticize the negotiated deal with RWE, which threatens to “break with the principles of our party”. The evacuation of Lützerath can “neither be understood nor accepted” and must be stopped “immediately and permanently”. So far, more than 1000 base greens can gather behind it.

The party is also criticized by climate activists. “The Greens have embarked on a fatal deal with RWE,” says one. The “Fridays for Future” activists accuse the party of “abusing” the energy crisis. It was hoped that the Greens would “draw and defend the ecological lines in the traffic lights”. Now they are the ones “who want to tear them down”.

A group of masked police officers met demonstrators near Lützerath

Watch the video: Police continue to clear Lützerath against 150 activists.

“The Environment Minister sleeps badly”

The lignite debate had already drawn a visible rift through the party in October. At the time, who called for a moratorium on Lützerath, and that narrowly: they were defeated by the supporters of the compromise with RWE by only 294 to 315 votes.

The party leadership defends the eviction of Lützerath, but tries to calm the green minds. Co-Chairman Ricarda Lang emphasized that the agreement in the Rhenish mining area in 2030 would put an end to coal. “Nevertheless, I understand the people who are demonstrating there now, the frustration and, above all, the pressure for more climate protection”, . Co-boss Omid Nouripour argued similarly.

For the Greens, 2023 will start with an ordeal. Oliver Krischer, Minister of the Environment in North Rhine-Westphalia, is also torn. On the one hand, the Green defends the agreement that “writes the final chapter in the exit from coal in North Rhine-Westphalia.” On the other hand: “This is a difficult time, the environment minister sleeps badly because it hurts me.”

Sources: , , , , , , with material from the DPA news agency

Source: Stern

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