The Bundestag debates this week serve to warm up to new positions.

It is - still - about nothing, there are no bills.

The government factions therefore only used the debate on economic policy to talk in non-binding terms about the will and the size of their climate task.

But anyone who, like the Green Federal Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck, constantly emphasizes how quickly the CO2 reduction has to go now, is not doing justice to their own claims.

It has to become more specific quickly.

A risk he eschews.

The new opposition leader did not make a convincing figure in the debate either.

The CDU and CSU experience painfully that their initiatives - such as the extension of the deadlines for tax returns - are thrown out by the majority of traffic lights.

The Union must now practice the tone in which it attacks the government.

After all, after 16 years in power, it is partly responsible for most of the problems that red-green-yellow has on the table.

The Union has a lot to answer for

It seems cheap when ex-Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner, as the Union's new economic spokesperson, sounds too loud that the traffic lights abolish the EEG surcharge too late. It is just as cheap when the CSU calls for the electricity tax to be waived. The Union could have done all of this long ago. It did not do it because it could not answer the question of how the overspending and loss of income can be absorbed without breaching the debt brake.

The billions of billions of green electricity producers will have to be met for a long time to come.

In a first step, shortly before the election, the grand coalition shifted part of the EEG claims to the federal budget and sold it as relief in the fight against the economic consequences of the pandemic.

The traffic lights want to continue on their way.

But how the federal government will cope with the enormous additional expenditure if the debt brake takes effect again is unclear.

The Union should not make life too easy for itself in the opposition, nor should it rely on the forgetfulness of the voters.

If she wants to return to power she has to show day after day that she has better solutions than the traffic light.