Merkel warns at Environment Ministry anniversary: Climate protection remains a matter of survival

Merkel linked her warning with an admonition to politicians. She called out to the audience: "Remain steadfast." She also described the trading of emission certificates as "important and correct." Looking at the present, she asked self-critically: "The question remains whether it would have been within my power to take more precautionary measures in climate protection." She admitted that they had "acted time and again according to the principle of hope and not according to the precautionary principle."

Positive Assessment by the Current Minister

The current Federal Minister for the Environment, Carsten Schneider (SPD), presented an explicitly positive assessment of the 40-year-old authority in his celebratory speech. "Environmental policy has made our country stronger and safer," he said. Germany has grown economically in the past four decades and has become "healthier and more sustainable" in the process. Many bodies of water like the Rhine and Elbe are clean again and are regaining their floodplains. Schneider described his predecessor Klaus Töpfer, who established the ministry after the Chernobyl reactor accident, as "courageous and unconventional."

Merkel recalled that the authority was founded on July 6, 1986, just a few weeks after the Chernobyl reactor disaster. Previously, environmental tasks were handled by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry. The GDR had already established its own Ministry for the Environment in 1972, making it one of the first states worldwide with such a department. Merkel spoke of "sloppiness in the Soviet Union" as the cause of the accident and emphasized that she did not see it as a fundamental weakness of nuclear technology.

Looking Back at Chernobyl and the GDR

In a speech of about 15 minutes, the former Chancellor also touched upon her own political biography. As Minister for the Environment, she initially faced skepticism in Bonn: "The enthusiasm in Bonn was limited; I wasn't immediately followed." She recalled the cast iron transports of that time, noting that they were sometimes secured by up to 30,000 police officers. It was difficult to "enforce law and order." Looking back at the 1995 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Merkel said: "I had discovered the diplomat in me."

Merkel was not without dissent. When she defended the phase-out of nuclear energy, she reiterated: "I am still of the opinion today that we can achieve the climate goals without nuclear energy." In 2010, as Chancellor, she extended the operating lives of German nuclear power plants; after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, she pushed for the nuclear phase-out under a CDU-FDP federal government. Sitting in the hall between Merkel and Schneider was former Federal Minister for the Environment Jürgen Trittin (Greens), who had initiated the phase-out during the SPD-Green era.

Dispute over Renewable Energies

In his speech, Schneider advocated for the expansion of renewable energies and referred to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). The energy transition makes Germany more independent of autocratic supplier states. "Anyone who opposes the further expansion of renewables is acting against national interests," said the SPD politician. The CDU-SPD federal government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Merkel's former intra-party rival, is called upon to continue this course, according to Schneider.

Merkel also indicated in Berlin that she still sees herself as a cautionary voice. Humanity must ask itself whether it is willing and able to take scientific warnings seriously or only act after disasters. She described her motives from the 1990s at the Ministry for the Environment – the Circular Economy Act, action programs for the Rhine and Elbe, and the ban on dumping diluted acids in the North Sea – as building blocks of a policy that began on a small scale.

Merkel's words are likely to provide new fuel for the ongoing debate about nuclear power and European emissions trading. Observers interpret the fact that the former Chancellor criticized the principle of hope precisely on the anniversary of the institution founded in 1986 as an indirect criticism of federal policy, which is increasingly wavering under the pressure of geopolitical crises and rising energy prices. The Federal Ministry for the Environment, Schneider said, will continue its work at the interface of climate protection, reactor safety, and economic policy.

The date July 6, 1986, refers to the founding of the ministry, which followed shortly after the Chernobyl reactor disaster. The GDR had already established a Ministry for the Environment in 1972 and is thus considered one of the first countries worldwide with an independent environmental department. In the Federal Republic, environmental tasks were previously handled by the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry. With the anniversary, the ministry also commemorates its responsibility for the safety of nuclear facilities.