The CSU politician Alexander Dobrindt defends the tough action of the Bavarian judiciary against the climate stickers – and threatens Robert Habeck with further steps in the heating dispute.
At the meeting in the Bundestag, Union parliamentary group leader and CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt is in a good mood: The grueling heating dispute between the Greens and the FDP and the reluctance of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the cause – all of this plays into the hands of the opposition. In the best riot manner, Dobrindt, as a former CSU general secretary not a man of soft words, follows up in the interview.
t-online: Mr. Dobrindt, are you happy that the Greens are now competing with the affair party CSU?
Alexander Dobrindt: You can’t put it that way.
Why not? The CSU has a long tradition of affairs: mask deals, lobbying for authoritarian states like Azerbaijan…
objection. The cases cannot be compared with each other and certainly not the processing. If there is misconduct by people, as in the mask affair, this has led to numerous changes: The compliance rules in our parliamentary groups, both in the federal government and in Bavaria, have been significantly tightened and the people concerned had to leave the parliamentary groups or the party.
State Secretary Graichen was also dismissed.
After he could no longer be held. Previously, Habeck eloquently stated that this man cannot be “sacrificed” because he is the traffic light’s energy expert. And since then, Habeck hasn’t worked on anything, so that the Habeck/Graichen system and the clan structures that have taken over the Ministry of Economics remain in place.
Not all family ties were created in Mr Habeck’s time: the cooperation with BUND Berlin, which Mr Graichen’s sister heads, came about under his CDU predecessor.
Who is not related to the Graichen family. But in addition to the family ties of leading employees, it is also about ties with environmental lobbyists, whose demands are accepted without distance in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Mr. Habeck is responsible for this. He not only allowed this system of lack of distance between lobbying and state administration, but quite obviously promoted it.
Classic political career
Alexander Dobrindt, who was born in Upper Bavaria and has a degree in sociology, was Secretary General of the CSU from 2009 to 2013 and Federal Minister of Transport from 2013 to 2017 in Angela Merkel’s third cabinet. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2002, and he has always won his Weilheim constituency directly. The 52-year-old Dobrindt is married and has one child.
“Zeit” recently reported on the agricultural policy spokesman for the CSU in the Bundestag, Artur Auernhammer: He sits on the Agriculture Committee and is involved there with the use of biomass to generate renewable energies. But he is also CEO of the Bioenergy Association (BBE), an important player in the billion-dollar biomass business. Isn’t that also a case of lobbying?
We have clear compliance rules in our parliamentary group, which, by the way, no other parliamentary group has followed. Artur Auernhammer is an active farmer and a freely elected member of parliament. He must declare any potential conflicts of interest, and he does so. He explicitly does not take on a rapporteur function for the topic of bioenergy. Apart from that: a free parliamentary mandate that is carried out transparently is something completely different from the function of an official in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. In the Graichen case, compliance rules were deliberately not observed and not properly checked. I have never experienced anything like this in any other ministry. The fact that lobbyists not only come and go in Mr. Habeck’s house, but also obviously occupy top positions, is a particularly blatant case.
Must Mr. Habeck resign?
The processing of the Habeck affair is not yet over. He himself says that there was one mistake too many in the Graichen case. That means yes, there were a whole series of errors. We’ll look at that further. Therefore, in the end, a committee of inquiry may be necessary to investigate Robert Habeck’s responsibility.
Mr. Habeck and the Greens currently have other problems: above all, the ongoing dispute with the FDP. Will the traffic light last until the end of the legislative period?
Given the current allegations, ultimatums, threats and belittling over the last few weeks, I wonder if it wouldn’t be more honest to say that there is no longer a common ground to work together. But I’m afraid the traffic light doesn’t have the power for that either. They will therefore continue to block and degrade each other in the future.
Theoretically asked: would the Union be available for a black-green alternative?
I currently see no similarities between the leadership of the Greens and their ideological policy of crowbar against the citizens and no basis for cooperation.
To put it even more theoretically, could you imagine a coalition with the FDP?
