Citizen dialogue with incident
Scholz thinks the 9-euro ticket is “one of the best ideas”
08/21/2022, 5:12 p.m
Finance Minister Lindner is sticking to it: there will be no extension of the nine-euro ticket. Chancellor Scholz sees it differently. At the open day in the Chancellery, he announced talks about a successor arrangement for the ticket. Two activists caused an uproar during the civil dialogue.
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner has again rejected calls for an extension of the nine-euro ticket. “That would cost 14 billion euros,” said Lindner in the “Report from Berlin” of the ARD capital studio. This money would be missing elsewhere for education or for investments in the rail network. The idea of free local public transport “is not affordable”. From Lindner’s point of view, that would also be “unsustainable” and would ultimately “not lead to ecologically responsible decisions”.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, called the nine-euro ticket a “great success”. “It was one of the best ideas we had,” said the SPD politician at the open day in the chancellery. The ticket was well received and above all showed where there were difficulties and deficits in local public transport.
The Chancellor also announced talks about a successor arrangement for the cheap ticket. According to this, Minister of Transport Volker Wissing will examine together with the 16 federal states how the “convenience, usability, maybe also the affordability” in local public transport can be better regulated.
“Topless” demonstrators surprise Scholz
The women said they wanted to take a selfie with the chancellor. Then they took off their T-shirts.
(Photo: picture alliance/dpa)
However, the Chancellor’s tour of the garden of the Chancellery during the Citizens’ Dialogue was not without an incident. Two demonstrators stood next to Scholz wanting a selfie, but then took off their tops, revealing calls for a gas embargo on Russia. “Gas embargo now,” the two women had written on their bare chests. They were immediately pushed aside by security guards.
The federal government has so far rejected a gas embargo against Russia on the grounds that a secure energy supply cannot otherwise be guaranteed. However, Russia, for its part, has now greatly reduced deliveries. At a public discussion, Scholz also referred to alternative import routes, including new liquid gas terminals, of which “we can hope that we can put the first ones into operation at the beginning of next year and others over the course of the year. “Then we will have our problem of security of supply at some point solved at the beginning of 2024,” the Chancellor continued.