On May 30, the German government announced that all of Germany’s seventeen nuclear power stations would be permanently shut down by 2022.
Germany’s seven oldest nuclear power stations – temporarily switched off after public outcry and protests in the aftermath of the disaster in Fukushima – will remain offline, and will be permanently decommissioned.
An eighth plant – in northern Germany – is already offline because of technical problems, and will remain shut down for good.Six of the remaining 9 power stations will be shut down in 2021, and the final three will be turned off in 2022.
"It's definite: the latest end of the last three nuclear power plants is 2022," Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen told reporters. "There will be no clause for revision."
The announcement has been greeted with critical support from anti-nuclear and environmental organisations such as Greenpeace, who have maintained their call for an earlier phase out date of 2015.
The announcement is not an entirely new proposition, either. In 2001, the then coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the German Greens passed legislation to phase out nuclear power in Germany by the end of 2021.
State elections on March 27 saw the German Greens win an historic victory in Baden-Württemberg – where they will form Germany’s first-ever Green-led government – and triple their vote in the Rheinland-Pfalz.
Riding on widespread public opposition to nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the Greens doubled their support to 24.2 percent of the vote in Baden-Württemberg.
The centre-left Social-Democratic Party (SPD) won 23.1 percent of the vote – a small drop on their 2006 result – while the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won 39 percent of the vote, down by over 5 points.
The CDU’s ruling coalition partner – the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) – lost more than half its support, dropping to 5.3 percent – barely enough to remain in the Landtag (state parliament).
The socialist party Die Linke (“The Left”), which took 24 percent in state elections in the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt on March 20, won only 2.8 percent of the vote – not enough to enter parliament.
The results mean that Baden-Württemberg will be governed by a Green-SPD coalition, led by the Greens’ Winfried Kretschmann – a founding member of the party in Baden-Württemberg and now the first ever Greens state Minister-Präsident (Premier).
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) survived a narrow vote in elections for the eastern state of Sachsen-Anhalt.
The right-wing CDU lost 3% of the vote from the previous elections, dropping to 32.6% support. The two other big parties in the state, the far left Die Linke and the centrist Social Democrats (SPD), remained steady on 23.8% and 21.5% respectively.
Merkel’s allies at a federal level - the pro-free market Free Democrats - failed to cross the 5% threshold needed to win a seat, as did the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).
The lead NPD candidate Matthias Heyder is under investigation for discussing terrorist methods and bomb-making techniques on an online forum. Right-wing and racist violence nearly doubled in Sachsen-Anhalt in 2010.
