BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s Greens presented an “emergency climate protection programme” on Tuesday, aiming to reset the party’s national election campaign after squandering an early surge in opinion polls with a raft of mistakes.
The programme includes plans for a new Ministry for Climate Protection that would ensure no legislative project undermines a goal of limiting global warming under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
The ministry would lead a government Climate Task Force that would meet every week for the first 100 days of the next government to speed up coordination on fighting climate change.
“This ministry will have a veto right over other ministries in the event of laws that are not Paris-compliant,” the Greens said in a paper outlining the programme. “We will adopt the largest climate protection package ever in cabinet.”
The ecologists briefly surged in the polls to overtake Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc after they named Annalena Baerbock as their chancellor candidate in April, but they have since lost support.
A scandal over a Christmas bonus payment that Baerbock failed to declare to parliament, and a suggestion that Germany should arm Ukraine have hurt the Greens, who now trail the conservatives by 5-10 points.
Baerbock has also said sexist scrutiny is holding her back.
Her best shot of becoming chancellor would be to lead a coalition with the left-leaning Social Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP).
Merkel, in power since 2005, plans to stand down after the Sept. 26 election.
Under the 10-point programme, the Greens would increase investment in climate protection by 15 billion euros ($17.8 billion), and do away with 10 billion euros of what they term “environmentally harmful subsidies”.
They also want to bring forward the phase-out of coal-fired power generation to 2030 from 2038 and to accelerate the expansion of renewable energy.
“At the current pace, Germany would need another 56 years to get to 100 percent green electricity,” the party’s paper said. “We do not have that time.”
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(Reporting by Holger Hansen; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Mike Harrison)
