Instead of complaining about leaked internals, it would be better for the economy minister to come up with a solution.
(Photo: IMAGO/Frank Ossenbrink)
An outburst of anger like that of Robert Habeck in the “Tagesthemen” is extraordinary. The Vice Chancellor complains about the resistance of his coalition partners SPD and FDP to reform projects. He doesn’t leave a good hair on the performance record of the self-proclaimed progressive coalition.
But Habeck is right. Campaign promises have to be kept, otherwise no one will believe them anymore – on the one hand. On the other hand, one cannot expect that the SPD, Greens and FDP, after a little more than a year in government, have cleaned up the omissions of the dusty 16 years of Merkel’s reign. Nevertheless, the diagnosis is correct that there is a big gap between words and deeds.
The first example is the current wind power summit in Habeck. Chancellor Olaf Scholz set the benchmark quite high in several interviews. By 2030, four to five new wind turbines should be installed in Germany every day. So if no wind turbine is built one day, it would have to be eight to ten the next day.
It is of course right to set yourself ambitious goals, otherwise you wouldn’t need to start at all. But if you look at the resistance in the population and at Bayern Markus Söder, you know that the traffic light coalition will again be run under its own yardstick.
Example two of the empty promises in the country is housing. The federal government wanted to build 400,000 new, affordable and climate-friendly apartments every year, 100,000 of them social housing. The traffic light fails the reality check. With about 280,000 homes completed in 2022, the coalition is miles away from its targets.
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Of course, no one could have foreseen the war in Ukraine and the turnaround in interest rates. But what is the government doing? It could remove all obstacles on the way to owning your own home in order to expand the range. But don’t do it. It is better to let the EU plans for the forced renovation of houses and apartments run. Nobody wants to build or invest there anymore.
Example three: The plan to install 500,000 heat pumps per year is already doomed to fail. The craftsmen, who are now happy to take every business with them, point out like a mantra that more than 200,000 installations per year are not possible. The government should listen to them too.
There is a lack of installers and the necessary material. Habeck shouldn’t complain that his draft law was pushed through to the “Bild” newspaper, but should present a solution in the coalition committee on Sunday.
Because one thing remains: politics is not a magic show where you can entertain the citizens with all sorts of illusions. There comes a point when everyone has to deliver.
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