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Bavarian leader: charge foreigners autobahn fee

Bavaria's state premier says he wants to charge non-Germans to use autobahns. Although he insists he is serious and will challenge European laws to implement the idea, others say it is just electioneering.

Published: 12 August 2013 12:13 CEST
Bavarian leader: charge foreigners autobahn fee
Photo: DPA

Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) – the Bavarian arm of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc – is heading for almost certain victory in the state election on September 15. Part of his manifesto is to introduce a fee for non-German cars using autobahns.

He told the Bild daily newspaper that as Bavaria was a state that bordered lots of other countries where paying a fee for using the motorway was normal, it was only fair to charge foreigners for its autobahns.

“I, as head of the CSU, will not sign a coalition agreement in which there is no mention of introducing a car fee,” he said. The CSU is currently in a coalition with the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in Bavaria, but has often ruled alone.

The autobahn fee idea has caused friction among politicians, and even Seehofer admitted that such a fee would probably not be possible under European Union regulations.

“It is Bavarian election fight hullabaloo,” said Patrick Döring general secretary of the national FDP on Monady.

CDU transport politician Gero Storjohnn added that the plan “was not being taken as a serious suggestion.”

DPA/The Local/jcw

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MUNICH

Four injured as WWII bomb explodes near Munich train station

Four people were injured, one of them seriously, when a World War II bomb exploded at a building site near Munich's main train station on Wednesday, emergency services said.

Published: 1 December 2021 16:41 CET
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich.
Smoke rises after the WWII bomb exploded on a building site in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Privat

Construction workers had been drilling into the ground when the bomb exploded, a spokesman for the fire department said in a statement.

The blast was heard several kilometres away and scattered debris hundreds of metres, according to local media reports.

Images showed a plume of smoke rising directly next to the train tracks.

Bavaria interior minister Joachim Herrmann told Bild that the whole area was being searched.

Deutsche Bahn suspended its services on the affected lines in the afternoon.

Although trains started up again from 3pm, the rail operator said there would still be delays and cancellations to long-distance and local travel in the Munich area until evening. 

According to the fire service, the explosion happened near a bridge that must be passed by all trains travelling to or from the station.

The exact cause of the explosion is unclear, police said. So far, there are no indications of a criminal act.

WWII bombs are common in Germany

Some 75 years after the war, Germany remains littered with unexploded ordnance, often uncovered during construction work.

READ ALSO: What you need to know about WWII bomb disposals in Germany

However, most bombs are defused by experts before they explode.

Last year, seven World War II bombs were found on the future location of Tesla’s first European factory, just outside Berlin.

Sizeable bombs were also defused in Cologne and Dortmund last year.

In 2017, the discovery of a 1.4-tonne bomb in Frankfurt prompted the evacuation of 65,000 people — the largest such operation since the end of the war in Europe in 1945.

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