The candidates laid out their views on the and the country’s persistent issues with infrastructure and digitalization.
CDU leader Merz said the key is to get “the monster which is our bureaucracy under control.”
As for what sort of energy Germany should be using, he accuses the coalition government of “three perfectly good, functioning nuclear power plants” in the middle of the country’s “biggest energy crisis.”
“If we just keep declaring which energy sources we don’t want, we won’t get anywhere,” he says.
Weidel (AfD) also declared her support for “safe and reliable nuclear power, coal and gas and also, if we want, renewable energies.”
She promised a government which would be “open to new technologies” and “against bans.”
“Every consumer should be free to decide how they heat their homes and what sort of car they drive, and every business should be free to decide what they produce,” she said.
The Greens’ Habeck, who has served as Economy Minister in the current government, blamed Germany’s “structural economic crisis” on the absence of two key drivers of growth: cheap Russian gas and a shrinking export market.
“Let’s not forget, it’s [Russian President Vladimir] Putin who has caused this,” he reminded viewers, referring to Germany’s turn away from Russian gas following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Our previous reliance on Russian gas is what is now responsible for high prices now.”
As for exports, he said “Germany has already been an export nation” but said a shrinking market has only been exacerbated by tariffs imposed by the new United States government.
“When those two elements are missing, we see that we have invested far too little in making ourselves competitive,” he concluded. He agreed with Merz that Germany needs “less bureaucracy” and more investment in “infrastructure, trains, bridges, digitalization.”
Harking back to a previous question, he claimed that “legal migration will be vital for that.”
Chancellor Scholz (SPD) also blamed , but defended the German government’s response and insisted that the period of highest prices is over.
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