Parliament badly informed
Opinion: Procedure for exiting coal in NRW illegal
5/30/2023 8:53 p.m
In a historic deal, the Green politicians Habeck and Neubaur are negotiating an early exit from coal in NRW with the energy giant RWE. However, an expert opinion service has come to the conclusion that the state government’s actions are probably against the law.
With its approach to the coal phase-out, the North Rhine-Westphalian state government has not sufficiently informed parliament and thus violated applicable law. This is the assessment of the Parliamentary Advisory and Expert Opinion Service of the state parliament in an expert opinion that is available to the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post”. The FDP had commissioned the state parliament lawyers.
NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur and Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, together with RWE boss Markus Krebber, informed the public at a press conference on October 4, 2022; the responsible state parliament committee was not informed until October 19.
Instruction only orally
In the statement, the experts clearly write of a violation of the law. “According to case law, Parliament must also be informed if the information in question has already been made available to the public and thus also to the Members of Parliament.” The experts also state that the information given to the state parliament on October 19 was only oral and therefore not suitable for fulfilling the information obligation. “In addition, it is likely to have taken place late at this point.” As a result, the briefing of Parliament should have taken place at the same time as the press conference or immediately afterwards, according to the lawyers.
FDP parliamentary group leader Henning Höne sees his criticism of the state government confirmed by the findings of the state parliament lawyers. Höne told the “Rheinische Post”: “What does Mona Neubaur have to hide? The green minister hasn’t answered the open questions to this day, or makes excuses. She makes the supposed huge deal with RWE, but can’t even quantify exactly how much CO2 is actually saved by the early phase-out of coal.”
Apparently, Parliament and the public were deliberately left in the dark and confronted with a fait accompli, Höne speculated and spoke of a breach of the constitution. Rarely have Parliament’s rights to information been so trampled upon, criticized the FDP parliamentary group leader. “Disregarding the democratic rules of the game is eroding trust in this government.”