Germany’s Environment Minister fired; successor named

Share

The Environment Minister has been let go, following what has been described by Reuters as the "worst ever election result" in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, on Sunday, May 14. As deputy chairman of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), he was a "potential successor" to Chancellor, Angela Merkel’s position.

In a brief statement issued today, May 16, Merkel confirmed that she asked for the dismissal of Röttgen this morning. She reportedly wants to clear the way for a new beginning. The energy revolution is a key project for the Federal Government and must be pursued consistently, she said in the statement.

A successor to Röttgen has already been found. Peter Altmaier, Parliamentary Secretary of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group will undertake the role of Environment Minister. To date, the union leader from Saarland has had little to do with environment and energy issues.

Röttgen received criticism over his handling of Germany’s new EEG (Renewable Energy Law), which has still not been finalized, despite months of toing and froing. Just last week, Phillip Rösler, FDP (Free Democratic Party) leader and Economics Minister, who helped Röttgen with the original EEG plans, sharply criticized him. "There is great anger at Röttgen, because he is unable to assert his position," one FDP representative told Reuters. "This shows how little influence he has."

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Popular content

Rooftop PV installations could raise daytime temperatures in urban environments by up to 1.5 C

09 October 2024 New research from India shows that rooftop PV system may have "unintended" consequences on temperartures in urban environments. Rooftop arrays, for ex...

Share

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.