2023-05-03 14:42:27
Kubicki threatens Habeck with blocking all green “favourite projects”
Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP, left), Robert Habeck (Greens)
Source: picture alliance/dpa/Frank Molter; picture alliance/Flashpic/Jens Krick
Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) accuses Robert Habeck (Greens) of a “lousy power-political game”: The Economics Minister is blocking the expansion of the transport infrastructure in Schleswig-Holstein in an “unscrupulous way”. This will have “massive parliamentary consequences” in the Bundestag.
EInst the two in Schleswig-Holstein threaded the first functioning Jamaica coalition nationwide, now they face each other almost irreconcilably within the traffic light government: With unusually drastic words throws Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) before deliberately torpedoing the economic development of their common homeland. Habeck is playing “a lousy power-political game” at the expense of Schleswig-Holstein, writes Kubicki in a press statement sent out on Wednesday.
The background to the escalating dispute between the two traffic light partners is a planned expansion of a relatively short stretch of motorway just outside Hamburg: the A23 motorway between Tornesch in Schleswig-Holstein and the Hamburg district of Eidelstedt is to be expanded from four to six lanes over a length of 15 kilometres, in order to avoid previously regularly recurring traffic jams in the future.
According to Kubicki, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) included the corresponding construction measures in the catalog of infrastructure measures of “outstanding public interest” that the traffic light coalition wants to implement more quickly in the coming years. Schleswig-Holstein’s black-green state government approved the project last week – albeit with recognizable grumbling from the smaller of the two coalition partners.
According to Kubicki, Habeck’s ministry is now trying to circumvent precisely this decision. The Economics Minister is calling for the expansion of the A23 to be removed from the federal government’s catalog of acceleration, writes Kubicki. The Federal Minister of Economics is thus torpedoing “one of the most important infrastructure for the state” and thus “massively damaging Schleswig-Holstein as a business location”, writes Kubicki – not without referring to Habeck’s current weak point, the allegations against the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
According to Kubicki, he can understand “that Robert Habeck is under pressure because of the dubious family entanglements in his house. But if he thinks he is distracting himself from his personal suffering in such an unscrupulous way, he will find that this will have massive parliamentary consequences . This refers to numerous energy transition laws that are currently being prepared in Habeck’s ministry.
Habeck’s house refers to the Ministry of Transport
The Federal Ministry of Economics firmly rejected Kubicki’s allegations on Wednesday. According to this, the expansion of the A23 was not on the acceleration list decided by the traffic light coalition committee at the end of March.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Economics told WELT that her house had informed the Federal Ministry of Transport in good time of this fact. “However, this information was not followed up accordingly.” Accordingly, according to the Habeck Ministry, the A23 is not part of the draft law that the Federal Cabinet dealt with this Wednesday. “Wolfgang Kubicki should please address his criticism to Volker Wissing.”
In fact, the coalition committee decided to speed up the planning of motorway projects as follows: “Therefore, the federal government will stipulate the outstanding public interest for a narrowly limited number of particularly important projects and sub-projects to eliminate bottlenecks. These projects must either be assigned to the category ‘Priority requirement with elimination of bottlenecks’ (VB-E) or category ‘Ongoing and scheduled projects to eliminate bottlenecks’ (FD-E).”
The A23 belongs to the VB-E category. However, the wording of the coalition committee does not necessarily mean that all VB-E projects should be accelerated. The passage in the decision is somewhat unclear.
In any case, the A23 was not on the list of 144, which was passed around immediately after the coalition committee and was viewed by participants as the definitive enumeration of all motorway projects that are to be accelerated. But because the A23 is VB-E, it later ended up in a WELT version of Wissing’s draft law; and Schleswig-Holstein’s black-green government also agreed to this version a few days ago, including A23.
Now, however, the latter has apparently been removed from Wissing’s draft under pressure from the Greens because it is not on the list which, according to Greens participants in the coalition committee, is part of its resolutions.
Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU) reacted angrily to the new traffic light dispute. “With the undignified spectacle of the A 23, the federal government is gambling away any trust in reliable government work,” said the head of government in Kiel. In the end, it “doesn’t matter whether the Federal Minister of Transport forgot the A 23 on the list or whether the Green Economics Minister vetoed it. This buck game is being played at the expense of the commuters.”
The traffic light coalition is acting “against the legitimate interests” of Schleswig-Holstein. “This is a really bad day for the economic development of our country, a bad day for the citizens and also a very bad day for the relationship with the federal government. That’s just not how you treat each other.”
Kubicki’s attack is the second against his former Jamaican comrade-in-arms in just a few weeks. He had previously equated Habeck with the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. A comparison with which Kubicki had exposed himself to severe criticism within his own party and for which he asked for an apology.
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