Blade ax near Lanz
“Now everyone should pull themselves together”
By Marko Schlichting
05/25/2023 03:51 am
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil calls on his coalition partners to end the public dispute over the heating law. The law must be discussed and improved in the parliamentary process, says the politician on Markus Lanz on ZDF.
The SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil has appealed to the ministers of the traffic light coalition to end the dispute over the heating law on the open stage. “We have important questions to clarify,” says the politician on Markus Lanz on ZDF. “I want the heat transition to go ahead. I think it’s a very important point that it shouldn’t be delayed any further. But I don’t think it’s right to continue this discussion on an open stage.”
You win the approval of the population if you do your job and clarify the things that concern the citizens as quietly as possible in a coalition, Klingbeil continues. Confidence in politics cannot grow if the open coalition dispute is prolonged or heated up.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck’s planned building energy law has been causing controversy in the traffic light coalition for weeks. Among other things, the draft stipulates that from 2024 no new gas and oil heating systems may be installed. The traffic light coalition had agreed that newly installed heating systems should be operated with at least 65 percent renewable energy. The FDP had also approved a corresponding draft law, but then distanced itself from it. She rejected a first reading of the law in the Bundestag planned for this week. The Green Economics Minister Habeck then accused his coalition partner of breach of word. Klingbeil: “We now have to clarify in the Bundestag with the three factions of the traffic light how we can make the law better. But we don’t have to do it in any press conferences or theoretical debates about 101 questions. Now everyone should pull themselves together and do their work do in Parliament.”
Several FDP MPs recently claimed to have more than a hundred questions for the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Although they were actually published, they have not been received by the ministry. “The FDP’s questions are helping to keep the public dispute going and intensifying it,” says Klingbeil. In this context, the SPD leader speaks of “fog candles.”
Discussion benefits AfD
“I see that people are turning away from the idea of climate protection. We’re just starting to wage a culture war about it, and I think that’s absolutely harmful,” said the SPD leader. Such a discussion will primarily strengthen parties like the AfD, which claim that climate protection can be completely dispensed with.
How the law will continue is completely unclear. Klingbeil wants it to be dealt with for the first time in the Bundestag in the next week of the session, i.e. in three weeks. Parliament would then have two more weeks of sessions before the summer break. It is questionable whether the unclear issues can be clarified by then. Nevertheless, the three traffic light parties cannot actually afford to delay the law. The polls from the SPD, Greens and FDP are not looking good, and state elections will be held in Hesse and Bavaria in October.
That is also clear to Klingbeil: “We have to get the law through the Bundestag before the summer break,” he says. “The SPD stands by the agreement that the law will apply from January 1, 2024.”