The strong reaction of the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens is caused by the demand of the Prime Minister of Bavaria Markus Zender (CSU) to keep the nuclear power plants in his state in operation, despite the fact that yesterday the switches of the nuclear energy were finally turned off throughout Germany.
Markus Zender, speaking to Bild am Sonntag, asked the federal government to hand over responsibility for the operation of the nuclear power plant to the state government of Bavaria. “As long as the (energy) crisis continues and the energy transition is not completed, we must use every source of energy,” said Mr Zender. However, for what he is asking to happen, not only the consent of the governing coalition is required, but also important changes to the German Constitution.
“Mr. Zender with this gesture is running after a train that has already left. He is demanding something, because it is guaranteed that his request will be rejected,” Greens official and former federal environment minister Jürgen Trittin told the BILD newspaper, attributing Markus Zender’s stance to campaign strategy ahead of October’s state elections. “As of yesterday, the validity of the operating license of the nuclear plants has expired irrevocably. Even a later amendment of the legislation cannot change the constitutional provision that wants the responsibility for nuclear energy to belong to the federation and not to the states”, added the politician of the Greens and pointedly pointed out that “the states implement the Legislation on Atomic Energy on behalf of the federal government, something that even applies to Bavaria, even during the election campaign.’ Mr. Trittin also pointed out that the Bavarian prime minister wants to keep nuclear power plants running, but “doesn’t want anything to do with nuclear waste.”
On the part of the SPD and the head of the Parliamentary Group Matthias Meers considers that Markus Zender is just attempting a political maneuver in the run-up to the elections. “There will be no political decision to give Mr. Zender more powers in energy policy,” Mr. Mears told BILD and recalled that Markus Zender had threatened to resign after the Fukushima accident if Angela Merkel kept the nuclear plants. “Let’s hope this political zigzag will stop after the October elections,” said the Social Democrat politician.
However, Mr Zender found support from the vice-president of his sister Christian Democratic Party (CDU) Carsten Linnemann, who also told BILD that the Bavarian prime minister “is absolutely right, as it is crazy in these difficult times in terms of energy policy to existing secure units are demolished’.
Source: energymag
