Journal - Allianz

EUROPE
Darchinger
Allianz Group Journal 2/2013
“Civic participation doesn’t mean that there
will always be a socially desirable solution
at the end of the day.” Beate Jessel
danger that people will have a knee-jerk reaction to any
given project,” added Jochen Homann from the Federal
Network Agency. And he should know.
Stuttgart 21: protest; Frankfurt Airport: protest; energy transition:
everyone in favor; wind farms and overhead power
lines: protest. All over Germany it’s the same story: no matter
where a large-scale project is proposed, opposition isn’t
far behind – well organized, grey-haired and obstinate.
Are Germans a population of naggers, obstructionists and
objectors? This was the question behind the theme of this
year’s Benediktbeuern talks “The will of the people versus
large-scale projects”, organized by Lutz Spandau, the Foundation’s
CEO. It’s no surprise that there was plenty of discord.
Claudia Roth probably had the most difficult role during the
talks. As chair of Germany’s Green Party she attempted to
represent both her party’s roots of direct democracy and the
“realist” wing. She advocated more direct civic participation,
while at the same time making it clear that as far as she is
concerned, parliament remains the backbone of the decisionmaking
process in a representative democracy. “At a certain
point, politicians must make the decisions,” said Roth. Not
everyone’s point of view can be accommodated.
This was one of the few occasions when she agreed with
the President of the German Federal Network Agency,
Jochen Homann. However, Homann, whose responsibilities
include ensuring fair competition in the power and gas sector,
deplored many citizens’ “refusal to take responsibility”.
People aren’t against abstract goals such as energy transition
and expansion of the electricity grid, he said, but as soon as
there are specific plans at regional and local level, the protests
begin. So vested interests take precedence over the common
good “irrespective of party affiliation.”
“Rubbish,” countered Roth vigorously. The fact that expansion
of the power grids in Germany has stalled is not the
citizens’ fault, she said, but the energy companies’, who don’t
consider investment in this area lucrative. Homann, however,
was backed by Peter Schmitz, board member at Fraport AG,
who also noted that many citizens are becoming increasingly
opposed to change, in accordance with the motto “not
in my backyard”. This is particularly odd when it comes to
Frankfurt Airport, as everyone wants to fly but without the
airports and noise that go with it. Schmitz is snowed under
every month with around 175,000 letters of complaint
from about 1,000 people in the surrounding area protesting
against a new runway opened in 2011. And there is a demonstration
every Monday at the airport – “as ritualistic as a
Catholic mass,” says Schmitz.
Species protection as project killer
Anke Domscheit-Berg, internet activist and member of the
Pirate Party, had more understanding for citizens’ anger and
cited studies indicating that many people find the decisionmaking
processes of large-scale projects opaque. Civic participation
is nothing more than fraudulent labeling, she said:
“The ‘if’ of a project is often neglected, and only the ‘how’
discussed.” And mostly in language that the layperson can’t
understand – “fig-leaf politics” as Domscheit-Berg put it.
Beate Jessel, president of the Federal Agency for Nature
Conservation, bemoaned the lack of transparency of many
project procedures too. There should be open-ended discussions
with regard to planning, she opined. In her view the
people affected should be included early on in the process;
and adequate compensation should be offered for any
disadvantages incurred. Encroachment of the countryside
by large-scale projects also influences people’s sense of
belonging and regional identity. “And we must take these
emotional components seriously,” said the professor for
landscape development. On the other hand, she didn’t hide
the fact that nature and species protection are sometimes
used as a pretext to prevent unwelcome projects: protesters
go out of their way to find some endangered animal or plant
species in order to oppose an airport expansion, commuter
train line, national park, hydroelectric plant, wind farm or
underground cable.
(From left) Anke Domscheit-Berg, Claudia Roth, Lutz Spandau, Beate Jessel,
Peter Schmitz and Jochen Homann at the Benediktbeuern talks
Progressive aging of the population will only make people
more intransigent, said Peter Schmitz from Fraport.
Demographic trends go hand in hand with a decrease in a
willingness to change, he noted. The well-off “Wutbürger”
(enraged citizen) isn’t thinking about his grandchildren’s
generation or the country’s future. “I’m not very optimistic,”
said Schmitz. “We’re becoming very inflexible.”
Anke Domscheit-Berg, on the other hand, has witnessed a
movement developing especially in the digital world that
doesn’t reject or obstruct but gets involved, seeks an active
part and isn’t frightened off by red tape. The influence of
the internet community was evident in 2012 in the anti-ACTA
movement, which Domscheit-Berg believes prevented a
censorship infrastructure on the internet. In Hamburg, civil
society groups initiated a transparency law, obliging the
authorities to make all its data accessible on the internet –
the first of its kind in Germany.
“Of course civic participation doesn’t mean that there will
always be a socially desirable solution at the end of the day,”
Beate Jessel cautioned, before anyone got too excited. In
the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, for instance, the
coalition government of Greens and Social Democrats is at
loggerheads with the electorate, which is firmly against a
national park in the northern Black Forest. In North Rhine
Westphalia the will of the people has already prevented
the establishment of a national park. “There’s a substantial
Sometimes opposition produces strange results: while the
citizen’s army in one region is against underground electric
cables, the people in another region are vehemently in favor
of it to put a stop to high voltage above ground power lines.
“You sometimes get the impression that protests have
become the business model of assessors and lawyers,” said
Homann. Politicians haven’t been any real use to him in these
disputes. The greatest risk to energy transition is the disagreement
between the federal states about the future of
energy supply, he cautioned. “Sixteen different opinions
add up to a load of nonsense in the end. We suffer under
federalism when it comes to this issue.”
The guilty party
Claudia Roth, who could hardly contain her anger during
Homann’s statement, accused the government of being the
guilty party in the energy transition debacle. It’s unacceptable
that the Environment Ministry and Ministry of Economics
are at odds with each other in this matter, said the Green
politician: “We need coherence. It should have top priority in
the Chancellery.” Peter Schmitz concurred. “Politicians must
put forward a clear policy,” he said.
In the controversial prestige project Stuttgart 21, Roth’s party
has just had the painful experience that a clear policy isn’t
always enough. Although the Greens were emphatically
against the railway project, a majority in the 2011 referendum
voted against withdrawal of the federal state. The regional
government led by the Greens now has to implement the
development plan. “We crashed and burned,” admits Roth.
But she was in no doubt that direct civic participation is indispensable
for a living democracy. “Even if it hurts sometimes.”
HTTPS://UMWELTSTIFTUNG.ALLIANZ.DE
“You sometimes get the impression that protests have become
the business model of assessors and lawyers.” Jochen Homann
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