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GREENS

Bundestag votes against call for speed limit on Germany’s Autobahn

German politicians in the Bundestag have overwhelmingly voted against a proposal for a general speed limit on the country’s famous Autobahn.

Bundestag votes against call for speed limit on Germany's Autobahn
German politicians voted against a speed limit on the Autobahn. Photo: DPA

The Green party had requested vote on introducing a speed limit of 130 kilometeres per hour to come into force on January 1st next year. 

However, MPs voted against the move in the Bundestag on Thursday. A total of 498 MPs rejected the Green motion, while 126 were in favour of the speed limit. There were seven abstentions.

All members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) parties rejected the bill.

The vast majority of the conservative parties (CDU and CSU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) voted against it too. 

The CDU's Gero Storjohann warned against a “total surveillance of our Autobahn”.

Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer, of the CSU, had previously said the idea of imposing limits “defies all common sense”.

READ ALSO: Eight things you never knew about the German Autobahn

However, the Greens said the move would increase safety and be better for the environment.

“Anyone who wants to make motorways safer and traffic flow more smoothly must introduce a speed limit,” Green parliamentary party leader Anton Hofreiter told DPA before the vote.

The results also came under fire from the environmental group BUND. Deputy chairman Ernst Christoph Stolper said a speed limit is “an important step towards a safe and climate-friendly mobility of the future”.

Heated debate

The latest proposal has again triggered the heated debate over speed limits on Germany’s Autobahn system. 

Some argue that putting a general speed limit in place, usually touted as 130km/h, would make roads safer and reduce carbon emissions.  

However, for many people inside and outside Germany, the speed limit-free motorways are a strong part of the country's car-loving culture and history.

In a survey by The Local in May, Just over 70 percent of readers rejected the idea of imposing a general speed limit on the Autobahn network.

Meanwhile, the government already ruled out an Autobahn speed limit earlier this year.

Germany is the only country in Europe with no official speed limit on its motorways. However, about 30 percent of the Autobahn currently has a speed limit, according to Statista.

In Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, France and the Czech Republic there is a 130km/h limit on the motorway network. Meanwhile, in Belgium and Switzerland, a 120km/h limit is in place.

READ ALSO: How our readers feel about imposing a speed limit on Germany's Autobahn

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GREENS

ANALYSIS: Greens face dashed hopes – and new leverage in German vote aftermath

With growing fears about global warming, deadly floods linked to climate change and a new political landscape as Angela Merkel leaves the stage, it should have been the German Greens' year.

ANALYSIS: Greens face dashed hopes - and new leverage in German vote aftermath
The Greens co-leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck at the Greens' election event in Berlin. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Christoph Soeder

After launching their campaign for Sunday’s general election in the spring with a youthful, energetic candidate in Annalena Baerbock, the sky seemed to be the limit – perhaps even taking the chancellery.

But although Germany has never seen an election campaign so focused on the climate crisis, the party turned in a third-place finish behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), leading the race by a whisker, and the outgoing Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats.

However Baerbock, 40, proved popular with young voters and her party with around 14 percent strongly improved on its 8.9 percent score from four years ago.

It is now widely expected to play a key kingmaker role in the coalition haggling to form a government.

“We wanted to win the chancellery, unfortunately that wasn’t possible,” Baerbock said late Sunday.

“We made mistakes but we have a clear mandate for our country and we will respect it. This country needs a government that will fight global warming – that’s the voters’ message.”

A fateful series of missteps by Baerbock as well as a perhaps more tepid appetite for change among Germans than first hoped saw the Greens’ initial
lead fizzle by early summer.

LIVE: Centre-left Social Democrats edge ahead in German election results

It never recovered.

“It was a historic chance for the Greens,” Der Spiegel wrote in a recent cover story on Baerbock’s “catastrophic mistakes”.

“The Greens stand like no other party for the big issue of our time but that doesn’t begin to ensure that they win majorities. They need a broader base.”

Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Kay Nietfeld

‘Shameless and complacent’

Baerbock captured the imagination of Germans when she announced her candidacy in April, and her promise of a fresh start after 16 years of Merkel rocketed the party to the top of the polls.

But by this week, even her co-party leader Robert Habeck admitted that the Greens had been forced to set their sights lower.

“The distance to the chancellery has grown quite large of course,” he told the daily Die Welt.

“We saw that our political rivals didn’t have much interest in change and kept saying ‘Yes, yes, climate protection is nice but it shouldn’t be too expensive’.

Without recognising that not protecting the climate is the most expensive answer.”

He said the Greens’ rivals “want to continue the Merkel era in the campaign, as shameless and complacent as possible”.

‘Hold all the cards’

Critics sought to portray the Greens as a “prohibition party” that would lead to rises in petrol, electricity and air ticket prices.

The party has advocated stopping coal energy by 2030 instead of the current 2038, and wants production of combustion engine cars to end from the same year.

While Germans pay lip service to climate protection, a recent poll for the independent Allensbach Institute found 55 percent oppose paying more to ensure it.

“The Germans have decades of prosperity and growth behind them – there were hardly limits and that burned its way deep into the public consciousness,” Spiegel said.

“Doing without is linked to dark times – triggering memories among the very old of (wartime) turnip soup and alienation among the young used to having more and more to choose from.”

On the other hand climate activists, who rallied in their hundreds of thousands across Germany on Friday, said even the Greens’ ambitious programme would fall short in heading off climate-linked disasters in the coming decades.   

Meanwhile Baerbock’s relative inexperience was laid bare under the hot campaign spotlight.

“She overestimated her abilities and then she doubted herself – not a good combination,” Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Political Education
near Munich, told AFP.

“She should have been more patient and waited until next time.”

Despite the sobering outcome, the Greens nevertheless look well-placed to make the most of a junior role, under either SPD candidate Olaf Scholz or the

Armin Laschet, political analyst Karl-Rudolf Korte told ZDF public television as the results came in.

He said “all eyes” would be on the Greens and the other potential kingmaker, the pro-business Free Democrats, who came in fourth place with about 11.5 percent.

“Those two parties hold all the cards,” he said.

By Deborah COLE

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