Volker Wissingtransport minister of Germany, recently sent a letter to the leaders of the parties in the German government, as the newspaper Picture was the first to take part.
In the letter, the transport minister calls on the government to change its environmental legislation. If this is not done, he will be forced to take strict measures – for example, to ban driving on weekends.
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Threatens to ban driving
The background to the play is that German law states that the country must reduce its emissions by 65 percent from 1990 to 2030, meeting a number of annual environmental targets along the way.
If a sector fails to meet its environmental targets in any year, the responsible minister must introduce a package of measures. In 2023, the German transport sector missed its environmental targets, reports The Local.
Wissing proposes that the law be changed so that individual sectors are allowed to miss their emissions targets, provided that other sectors reduce their emissions by more than their targets to compensate.
If this change is not introduced, the Ministry of Transport may be forced to introduce “restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the public”, writes the Minister of Transport.
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Criticized from several quarters
It is clear that the Minister of Transport is in a difficult position due to the current laws. However, his powerful rhetoric has been met with criticism from several quarters.
Julia Verlindendeputy party leader of the German Green Party, believes that the transport minister’s claims are false, and that ministers should not use scare tactics against the population to get their way.
The environmental organization Greenpeace also opposes the minister’s rhetoric, and believes that the transport minister is trying to use his own failure to reach environmental goals to get his own political proposals through. The organization believes that the minister has blocked environmental reforms for several years, and is now painting horror scenarios to be able to pursue a less environmentally oriented policy in the future.
Volker Wissing, who belongs to the governing party FDP, has a history of opposing environmental measures – for example the introduction of speed limits on all German motorways.
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