Dhe federal government not only wants to accelerate the expansion of renewable energies in the future. Construction measures to expand and renew the “traffic infrastructure” should also go faster in the future. Agreement has now been reached on the draft law to speed up administrative court proceedings in the infrastructure sector, which the Federal Ministry of Justice had already presented in August, government circles announced on Tuesday. The draft of the Federal Ministry of Justice provides that the new version will also be applied to new construction projects in the infrastructure sector. In addition to rail, this also includes road.
An agreement is said to have been reached in the long-lasting dispute with the Federal Ministry for the Environment by Steffi Lemke (Greens). The Greens had so far resisted applying the measures to speed up the process too broadly, because then unpopular projects, for example in road construction, would also benefit from them. Even the expansion of the rail network was a thorn in the side of environmental associations, because it could not be ruled out that the construction of new tracks, which would have a negative impact on the environment, would be accelerated. Once the rails have been laid, unlike wind turbines, they are difficult to dismantle.
However, Federal Environment Minister Lemke did not explicitly position herself on this. It was only recently that she confirmed to the FAZ that all departments were “working constructively on a common solution”. “For the Federal Ministry for the Environment, too, it is of course a top priority to accelerate the processes with which the transformation is implemented in order to achieve the climate goals in good time.” However, a ministry spokesman did not want to comment on the news of an agreement that had now been reached: VwGO) have not yet been completed and are therefore further internal.” As usual, they will not comment on the current status of the votes.
With LNG, everything went very quickly
Right from the start, the traffic light government was concerned with accelerating major projects. The project also appeared in the coalition agreement with the specific reference to restricting environmental protection and species protection if necessary, in order to no longer hinder the expansion of wind farms, for example. So far it has only succeeded in the narrowly limited area of building new LNG terminals for the urgently needed delivery of liquefied gas. Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) presented a first draft law in August aimed at speeding up legal proceedings before the administrative courts. In this context, his reform of the VwGO is a comparatively small project, but the course is set in the negotiations of the coalition partners.
A controversial point in the project, in addition to the scope of application, is a regulation that allows the courts to be more generous than before about errors in the administrative procedure that are not of decisive importance for the project. In the future, there should be a clarification that courts can disregard a defect if it is obvious that it will be remedied in the foreseeable future. An agreement has now also been reached for this regulation in the sense of the regulations made by the Federal Ministry of Justice.
According to government circles, renewable energies urgently need to be expanded. This requires more wind power and powerful gas and power lines. In addition, modern and competitive road, rail and waterways are required. Advocates of a broad acceleration argue that the rules in German planning law are generally so complicated that they urgently need to be streamlined. The common argument is that places plagued by noise and traffic jams need bypass roads, and commercial areas need freeway access. This is all the more true in times of crisis like now, when “growth brakes” have to be released. With the VwGO reform that has now been initiated, Buschmann wants to make a concrete contribution to accelerating relevant projects. The draft is to be adopted “promptly” by the Federal Cabinet and forwarded to the German Bundestag.
Buschmann’s project is not the only one with which the federal government wants to speed up planning. A pact between the federal and state governments is said to have come a long way, and it is not limited to just promoting the expansion of renewable energies, but also mentions the creation of “affordable housing” and a “climate-friendly and environmentally friendly and efficient infrastructure”. Goals. The planned measures are still very vague in many cases, for example making the administration more digital and deploying more staff. However, long and cumbersome approval procedures are considered the root cause of overly long project planning. The acceleration in this area is more in the hands of the federal states and municipalities, the federal government has relatively little leeway.