In order to discover something surprising in a TV triall, the viewer has to be very careful.

There are several reasons for this: The three opponents Armin Laschet (CDU), Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Annalena Baerbock (Greens) are all professional politicians who cannot afford to leave the paths they have tried and tested and come up with spontaneous ideas.

Rather, every professional politician works with set pieces from speeches, the effect of which he has already tried out a dozen times in front of a smaller audience.

If there is applause for a passage, it goes into the reservoir for the next few times.

If it is badly received, it will be revised or taken out of the program.

Christoph Schäfer

Responsible editor for economics and finance online.

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Fortunately, a 95-minute television triall cannot be contested with completely formulated phrases and set pieces.

The exchange of blows is too direct for that, some inquiries from the moderators and some accusations from competitors come unexpectedly.

That is why there are at least two sentences in ARD and ZDF on Sunday evening that make you sit up and take notice.

Amazing in several ways

The first comes from Annalena Baerbock.

It rises to the bold assertion: "Every ban is also a driver of innovation."

The statement is astonishing in several ways. In the months before the last federal election, the Greens had lost a lot of approval because they were increasingly perceived as prohibition grandmasters who wanted to tell people exactly what to leave. The Greens learned from the decline in the polls at the time. Since then, they have been reluctant to go through the country with too many requests for bans.

The election manifesto of the Greens shows this in an exemplary manner. Of course they are against flying. But the eco-party shies away from a clear ban. Short-haul flights should therefore not be banned, but rather only become "superfluous" by the expansion of rail traffic by 2030. Even with regard to the internal combustion engine, the Greens are less radical than one might initially assume. In their election manifesto they are not calling for a clear ban, but “only” not to allow new registrations for cars with internal combustion engines from 2030 onwards. The party is not calling for a ban on petrol and diesel vehicles that have already been built.

All the more surprising now is Baerbock's sentence that every ban is also a driver of innovation.

Not only friends of freedom should think that the enthusiasm of the Greens for bans has apparently not died down since the last election.

In terms of content, the sentence is nonsense anyway.

Many bans are not innovation drivers, but rather impracticable, nonsensical or even harmful.

Or are the Greens in favor of banning abortions, banning fiber optic cables, banning freedom of expression, banning cell phones, or banning cows from puffing?

The front man of the Union provides another big surprise.

Armin Laschet tries at least once to overtake the Greens green: "We tell people that their lives will be better if they live CO2-neutrally."

Since humans are living beings that consume oxygen and emit CO2, a CO2-neutral life is not biologically possible. But also in a figurative sense, it would be interesting to know how exactly a person's life is actually improved if they live CO2-neutrally. First of all, a lot is lost or becomes more expensive due to equalization charges: driving a car, flying, eating meat, heating the apartment with gas or oil. Cell phones, clothing and furniture will also become more expensive because their manufacture and transport cause CO2. The ecological advantages are undisputed, but a truly CO2-neutral life is initially associated with waiver and price increases, there is no way around it, from a purely logical point of view.

Nevertheless, the Union's candidate for chancellor, of all people, plays down the costs when he promises: “It won't all get more expensive.” With the future income from CO2 taxes, the Christian Democrats wanted to abolish the EEG surcharge, which makes electricity more expensive.

But that's at most half the story.

The heated discussion about the price of fuel, the bitter dispute about whether landlords will have to pay the heating costs of their tenants in the future and the violent yellow vest protests in France two years ago show what costs and how many social booby traps on the way to CO2 -neutral society lurk.

A reference to the enormous additional costs and the social dangers would probably have paid more to the (former?) Brand core of the CDU than the blanket promise that “life will be better if people live CO2-neutrally”.

What is left to say?

Of course, Baerbock's newly awakened love for prohibitions and Laschet's joy in the CO2-neutral life are only a small excerpt from the one and a half hour triell.

But perhaps it is no coincidence that at the end of the discussion a representative survey by Infratest dimap came to the conclusion that Olaf Scholz was also able to win the second speech battle.

When asked “Who did you find most convincing?

 41 percent name the SPD candidate for chancellor.

Laschet follows in second place with 27 percent.

Baerbock is third with 25 percent

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