When the chairwoman and candidate for chancellor of the Greens, Annalena Baerbock, was asked on Monday about the mistakes she had made recently, she replied in principle.

It is important for them to be self-critical where “things have not gone well”.

Then transparency would have to be established and things would have to be done better in the future.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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The subject of the press conference at which Baerbock spoke in Berlin was specifically better disaster control in cases such as the recent flood and, more generally, climate policy.

As far as the latter is concerned, Baerbock apparently does not want to make a mistake: Find the guilt in the individual people and their behavior and tell them how they should live.

Many Greens may still remember the negative response to the proposal of Veggie Day, with which the Greens went into the 2013 election campaign after they had passed a corresponding decision at a federal delegates' conference.

A day with a vegetarian diet was seen as a “small change in our lifestyle” with which to “show the flag” against the “destructive means of industrial agricultural production: overexploitation of the climate and nature, unjust distribution of soil, water and food, waste of food and animal-torturing factory farming ".

On Monday, Baerbock pointed out that it was now two federal election campaigns.

"There is no lack of awareness"

Now people should no longer be primarily responsible, but politics. Climate protection is the central political task, "and there is no lack of awareness among the population, but rather a better climate protection policy". The federal government is responsible for the fact that one is no further on the way to the 1.5 degree path. “And it is also responsible for the fact that in recent years, not to say decades, we have had increasingly extreme weather events, repeatedly having so-called century floods, although the century was not yet over and all the suggestions that were made over and over again have been rejected by science, but also by us in parliaments for better climate protection. "

As examples, Baerbock cited floodplains on large rivers, the sealing of the soil, the redevelopment of cities, for example through greening. “It is not the fault of the population that this did not take place, but above all a union that has blocked it again and again,” she said, referring to the main opponent in the election campaign. Whether you have to do something differently with a view to the people: "No, not at all, we need a different policy that really invests in precaution, and that costs money."

Once again she made it clear: What is needed is “not better people”, but better politics.

Everyone contributes something with their own behavior, "but I, as an individual, cannot ensure that factory farms are no longer subsidized with EU agricultural subsidies".

That's why she “just doesn't say in this game: People don't want to”.

Immediate program announced

For the next week, the Chancellor candidate announced an immediate climate protection program that the next federal government should implement. The floods made it clear that “we urgently need to act”. For now, however, Baerbock and the Green Party politician Irene Mihalic presented a ten-point program for better civil protection and better disaster relief. A central demand is the better coordination of the activities of the federal government and the states in the event of disasters through the establishment of a “central authority” in the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Aid. However, the Greens also want disaster control to remain “first and foremost the task of the federal states”.

Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) said on Monday before a special meeting of the Interior Committee of the Bundestag that disaster control must remain the responsibility of the federal states. "Anyone who changes that will damage the matter," Seehofer had said before the start of the meeting. As a matter of fact, it is reported in government circles that this is due to the fact that one cannot judge from Berlin what the situation is, for example in a flood area in the west. But in addition, Seehofer has no interest in complaining about jurisdiction that the federal government does not have and thus also taking responsibility for possible errors - certainly not two months before a federal election.

Nevertheless, Seehofer also wants to improve something. Above all, the warning of disasters via app should become more effective. Another topic was to install more sirens in addition to the digital warning. Participants reported afterwards that the meeting should have been calm and matter-of-fact. It was agreed that everything else is now about helping the people in the disaster areas.