The federal and state governments want to boost the energy transition and construction – but environmental associations fear that this will happen at the expense of nature.
The measures adopted in the evening to accelerate planning and approval processes promise speed through the unilateral dismantling of environmental standards, criticized the Nature Conservation Association of Germany. “This puts many of the environmental protection achievements of the last few decades at risk.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and the prime ministers had previously agreed in Berlin on a package of legal changes that are intended to ensure that wind turbines, power lines, railway lines and apartments are built more quickly. Bureaucratic and legal hurdles should be reduced.
According to the Chancellery’s wishes, the package should be the centerpiece of the Germany Pact pushed forward by Scholz. Two months ago, the Chancellor proposed such cooperation to the states and the “democratic opposition” to modernize the country. In the last few decades, the federal and state governments have invented more and more restrictive regulations “with great love and affection,” Scholz said on Monday. Now it’s about “not having another politician say that everything should get faster, but that it actually happens.”
According to Scholz, the package includes around 100 individual regulations, including on motorways and train routes, the construction of apartments, the expansion of attics, heavy goods transport and the installation of cell phone masts and wind turbines. The Chancellor announced that further simplifications in the healthcare system and the hydrogen industry should follow.
Building regulations should be standardized
For example, the federal and state governments want to standardize building regulations in order to build more housing. If a house has been approved in one country, less extensive procedures should apply to identical buildings elsewhere. Converting an attic into an apartment should be possible without permission under certain conditions. The Hessian Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) emphasized that the conversion and expansion of apartments will no longer fail due to car parking spaces. In addition, a wind turbine can be replaced by another at the same location without further approval.
“I am very pleased that we are united as a federal and state government, and that is important in federalism,” emphasized Rhein. Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) summarized: “We are too complicated in Germany, so everything takes too long, and that of course makes it even more expensive in the end.” Now things should become easier and therefore cheaper.
Opposition leader Friedrich Merz particularly praised the federal states for not giving up on the issue. Now laws need to come quickly, the CDU leader told the Germany editorial network. The chemical and pharmaceutical industry association described the plans as a major success. “A two-year political tug-of-war has finally come to an end,” he explained. For far too long, complicated procedures have been a bottleneck in the transformation of the economy.
Environmental and nature conservation associations, on the other hand, have great concerns. The package restricts participation opportunities and lowers environmental standards, warned Nabu President Jörg-Andreas Krüger. Speed ??is currently “lost in understaffed administrations and courts and is not gained by cutting down forests”.
Suggestions as an “industry wish list”
German Environmental Aid also criticized the lowering of environmental standards in favor of business interests. “The proposals increasingly seem like an industry wish list: the argument of a supposed reduction in bureaucracy is used to justify the acceleration of climate-damaging projects,” explained Federal Managing Director Sascha Müller-Kraenner. Public hearings would be restricted and legal recourse restricted. “Lowering environmental standards and making democratic participation more difficult will certainly not prepare Germany for the future,” he warned.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (both Greens) responded to the associations’ criticism: “In the upcoming implementation of these agreements, we will therefore continue to ensure that transparency and legal protection are maintained and that environmental and nature conservation standards are not lowered,” promised she. However, faster procedures and less bureaucracy are necessary to modernize Germany and make it more climate-friendly. “We can only remain competitive if Germany becomes faster,” argued Habeck and Lemke.
