Zwickau/Munich (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) –– When Germans voted in a national election in September 2021, 33% of the population considered that the environment and climate were among the two main problems Germany was facing. In a poll from January 2025, one month before last weekend’s election, only 13% of the population held the same opinion, with the topic being displaced from first to fourth position in the concerns ranking. In this latest poll, climate change ranked far below migration and the economy, the two topics mentioned by over one-third of Germans as one of the top two problems in the country.
Climate change, a second rank topic in the campaign of the Greens
A good indicator of the decreasing salience of climate change in the election campaign was the limited attention it received from the German party most associated with pro-environmental policies, the Greens. After more than three years in the national government as part of a coalition with the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Greens were the only coalition partner that did not suffer severe losses on election night. Whereas the Greens moved from 14.7% of the vote in 2021 to 11.6% this time, the SPD had to content itself with 16.4% and third position as compared to 25.7% and first position four years ago. The FDP failed to enter the new parliament as it fell below the 5% threshold set in Germany’s election law.
At the same time, the idea of a Green chancellor, which did not appear impossible before the 2021 elections or in the months following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (when the Greens rose to 23% in the polls), was never within reach in this election campaign. Robert Habeck, Vice-Chancellor of Germany and Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action since 2021, led the Greens in these elections as “chancellor candidate” in what was more a political marketing strategy than real conviction about his chances.
In his visit to Munich on January 18, Habeck spoke in a campaign event at (of all places) Motorworld München, a self-described “meeting point for driving culture.”
In his speech, Habeck (who wants to raise Germany’s military expenditure from 2% of the GDP to 3.5%) defended the need for Germany to continue supporting Ukraine with military aid, especially if US support for Kyiv declines or completely halts. The Greens’ candidate also warned about the rise of anti-democratic forces in Europe, singling out the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Climate change did not receive as much attention as it would likely have been the case ahead of the 2021 elections when the party’s chancellor candidate was Annaelena Baerbock, who would later become foreign minister. In Munich, Habeck insisted that Europe needs to play a leading role in the fight against climate change if it wants to avoid other countries in the world reneging on their climate commitments.
The traffic-light coalition’s balance
The balance of the Scholz-led government regarding the fight against climate change is a mixed one. Germany’s CO₂ emissions have been decreasing for three years in a row and the expansion of renewable energies is proceeding at a fast pace, with record numbers in solar power installations and approvals for the building of wind turbines. 80% of the reduction in CO₂ emissions has taken place in the energy sector, with measures such as the decreasing use of coal to produce energy. The transportation and heating sectors, far more complicated to decarbonize, have lagged far behind. At the same time, the decrease in CO₂ emissions is partly connected to Germany’s economic downturn, with two consecutive years of moderate recession.
One of the German government’s most popular policies has been the “Deutschlandticket”, introduced in May 2023 to provide access to the local and regional public transportation networks for €49 [$51.27] per month (since 2025, the price has been €58 [$60.69] per month). According to a study by the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin, the “Deutschlandticket” led to a decrease of 4.7% in CO₂ emissions in the transportation sector during the first year of its implementation. In a population of 84 million, there were 13.5 million users of the “Deutschlandticket” by the end of 2024.
The traffic-light coalition (after the colors of the three parties) came into power in December 2021 under the promise of a “progress coalition”. One of the most ambitious policies in the coalition agreement was the introduction of a “Klimageld” (climate money) that would have re-distributed the funds collected with rising CO₂ taxes on refueling or polluting heating systems to the population with lump sum payments. Once the government had finally set up the system to provide the payments, there was no room left in the budget. In November 2023, after a legal challenge filed by the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the German constitutional court determined that the government’s “climate and transformation fund” (which amounted to €60 billion) was unconstitutional because it had been funded with unspent money from pandemic emergency measures. This forced the ruling coalition to cut the budget dramatically as the FDP from within the government, and the CDU/CSU from the opposition, blocked any reform of the “debt brake” inscribed in the constitution that severely limits the government’s borrowing capacity.
The “Klimageld” should have widened the acceptance of measures against climate change among the population. The exact opposite came about as a result of Habeck’s “Gebäudeenergiegesetz” (buildings’ energy law), popularly known as “Heizungsgesetz” (heating law), which requires new buildings to have heating devices using at least 65% of renewable energy. When the draft law was leaked to the press in February 2023, it did not include provisions on how to economically help owners move to the greener but more expensive new heating systems. There was also no mention on how to prevent landlords form transferring the costs of the new heating devices to the tenants. Although changes were later introduced, the “Heizungsgesetz” contributed to the popular perception (somewhat simplistic, but not inaccurate) of the Greens as a party that designs measures against climate change while leaving the population behind. In his campaign event in Munich in last January, Habeck noted that protection against climate change is eventually about protecting people. In the last weeks of the campaign, an election placard with a similar sentence could be seen across Germany.
The message appears to have come too late, or not convincingly enough if we are to judge by the final election results and the polls among voters on election day. While 48% of voters manifested worries about being able to maintain their life standards in the future, the figure was only 26% among Green voters (by far the lowest value of any party), suggesting the Greens did not manage to convince those who struggle economically to vote for the party.
Between AfD’s climate change denialism and CDU’s wish to keep fossil fuel vehicles running
In last weekend’s election, the far right AfD achieved a record result of 20.8% of the votes (exactly doubling its previous results), finishing second. The party questions man-made climate change and wants Germany to abandon the Paris Climate Agreement and the EU’s Green Deal. The elections were won by the conservative CDU/CSU. They obtained 28.5% of the ballots (the second lowest result ever for them, but higher than in 2021) and will most likely appoint the next chancellor, CDU leader Friedrich Merz. In its election program, the CDU/CSU demands a reversal to the phase-out of combustion engines for cars in 2035, a decision taken at the EU level. The conservatives also want to increase again the subsidies for agricultural diesel. Although it was a CDU-led government under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel that decided in 2011 to move Germany away from nuclear energy, the party is now open for a return to this kind of energy. This will probably not happen, though, because the last nuclear plants closed in 2023, and re-opening them would demand big investments as well as guarantees to the companies operating them that they would remain open for a long time.
Photo of Campaign Poster by Marc Martorell Junyent
Hardly a greener coalition in the future
Last January, the CDU/CSU presented a non-binding resolution in the Bundestag asking for an immediate stop to immigration. To approve it, the CDU/CSU relied for the first time in history on AfD’s votes. Even so, the conservatives continue to reject forming a coalition with the far-right party, both because of its relativization of Nazism and their closeness to Russia. The next government will most likely be formed by the CDU/CSU and the SPD. The main pillars of the center-right and center-left, which have appointed every chancellor in Germany since the Second World War, lost for the first time a majority in votes (they jointly obtained 45% of the ballots). Even so, they will have 328 out of 630 seats in the Bundestag because almost 10% of the votes went to parties that did not cross the 5% mark. A coalition between CDU/CSU and the Greens, which would have found internal resistance on both sides but was not completely discarded before the elections, is now out of question as the sum of the parties falls 23 seats short of a majority.
The policies of the next German government regarding climate change, then, will ultimately depend on the coalition negotiations between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. The SPD included the “Klimageld” that it could not implement while in government in the election program. The Social Democrats also want to maintain the prohibition of buying new cars with combustion engines starting in 2035. The SPD, however, enters negotiations with the CDU/CSU with 120 seats in parliament as compared to the CDU/CSU’s 208 and is expected to make major concessions. It is also more likely to make them when it comes to measures against climate change than in pensions or unemployment benefits, which are core issues for the SPD.
The crisis in Germany’s automotive industry
One of the challenges ahead for the next government is the state of the German automotive industry. Last autumn was full of negative news coming from car producers. On October, the head of Volkswagen’s works council announced that the company was planning to shut down at least 3 plants in Germany, endangering the jobs of some of Volkswagen’s nearly 300,000 staff in Germany. On November, Ford also announced plans to reduce the number of workers in Germany. At the end, Volkswagen guaranteed workers’ jobs until the end of 2030 but 35,000 jobs will be eliminated through retirement and attrition. In exchange, the main workers’ union at Volkswagen agreed to withdraw demands for wage increases until 2031.
While the managers of the company and the German business newspapers pointed out that Volkswagen offers their workers well-paid and secure jobs, which according to their argument severely limits the company’s competitivity, less attention was paid to the fact that in 2023 Volkswagen recorded profits of more than €18 billion [$18.83 bn.] and shareholders received €4.5 billion [$4.71 bn.] in dividends. The CEO of Volkswagen, Oliver Blume, earned more than €10 million [$10.46 mn.] in 2023, an even higher amount than the chiefs of Adidas or Deutsche Bank.
The situation of the automotive industry in Germany has been worsened by sudden halt of cheap gas coming from Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Still, the crisis in the German automotive industry is anything but new. German automakers have reduced the number of workers by 46,000 since 2019 while being unable to counter the expansion of China-made battery electric vehicles into the EU. Whereas electric cars produced in China represented 11% of all electric vehicles sales in the EU in 2020, it is projected that this year the figure will climb up to 25%.
At the same time, German combustion engine vehicles are far less sought-after in China than was the case years ago. The automotive industry was also dealt a major setback after the German constitutional court determined the government’s budget to be unconstitutional in 2023. The government’s subsidies for consumers buying electric cars was one of the projects left without funds to square the budget. To this, one must add the possibility that the Trump administration imposes tariffs on European exports to the US in the near future.
Zwickau, birthplace of the Trabant, stronghold of AfD
The uncertainty surrounding the German car industry has political consequences, especially in those parts of the country where the economy has traditionally been weaker. This is the case of Zwickau, in the eastern federal state of Saxony. The city prides itself on being the birthplace of the composer Robert Schumann and the Trabant, an iconic small car first produced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1957. As explained in the August Horch Museum, an automobile museum in Zwickau, the name Trabant (which means companion or satellite, in reference to the Soviet space program of that era) was chosen by the employees that produced the car at the VEB Automobilwerk Zwickau. Three million Trabants were registered in the GDR. Because the demand for the car was always higher than the offer, old Trabants could be resold at a benefit for the buyer.
After the collapse of the GDR in 1989, Volkswagen was one of the many West German companies that entered the newly opened market in the East and profited from the privatization of assets formerly owned by the state. Already in 1990, the first Volkswagen Polo was produced in Zwickau. The 1990s were a very complicated decade in eastern Germany, with unemployment rates of almost 20% by the turn of the century. Although unemployment rates are far lower nowadays, the five federal states that belonged to the GDR continue to be the five poorest regions of united Germany.
The Volkswagen production plant in Zwickau, completely dedicated to electric vehicles, is expected to be affected by the new plans of the company. Starting in 2027, the Zwickau plant will have only one production line (and only Audi models). This will have effects not only on the 9,500 workers at the Volkswagen plant in Zwickau but also on those working in factories in the region that supply parts to Volkswagen. There is also anger in the region about the fact that, in the latest negotiations, Volkswagen plants in western Germany have been relatively spared from production cuts whereas the ones in the East will see larger reductions in production and personnel. There are many reasons behind the far-right success in eastern Germany, but de-industrialization is certainly one of them. In last weekend’s election, the AfD obtained 41% of the votes in Zwickau and the surrounding areas (as compared to 25% in 2021). The number was even higher than the average in Saxony, 37% of the ballots.
Although the AfD has a very neoliberal economic program, the party has struck a chord among manual workers. In an interview conducted after last weekend’s elections, Sociologist Klaus Dörre explains it this way: “AfD told the workers at Volkswagen in Zwickau: It was Volkswagen’s planned economy that led to the crisis! We told you so right away. E-mobility won’t work, it’s the product of globalist elites who want to destroy German industry. And then the latter happens, demand for electric cars plummets. In addition, and this is typical in these Volkswagen compromises: the first thing to be done is to cut jobs in the East.”
The next government coalition in Germany is unlikely to take steps forward regarding protection against climate change. If parliamentary majorities can be found in the future for such steps, they will need to combine green policies with a social consciousness that does not leave anyone behind. Otherwise, the fight against climate change risks being seen as an elite project that leads to higher prices and no benefits for the popular classes. It is only through a fair distribution of the costs that a green economic transition can find wide acceptance among the population.
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