Bilger and Rainer: Two federal ministers, the ‘weather’ and light-hearted remarks

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At a time when not only Germany but the whole of Europe is suffering from heat and water shortages – or rather, drought – it would be better if some ministers would simply keep their mouths shut. Light-hearted remarks may sometimes bring a smile to people’s faces, but they are often inappropriate. At the moment, Ministers Steffen Bilger and Alois Rainer are being called upon to address the issue of the drought, and neither of them is coming across well.

Steffen Bilger and the weather

“We can’t influence the weather,” says the new Federal Minister of Transport, Steffen Bilger, referring to dried-up rivers that barely allow any inland waterway transport. Just so nobody accuses me of taking this out of context, he goes on to say, “… but we could ensure that our economy gets through these difficult weeks in better shape.”
That sounds like a plan, but unfortunately it consists of measures that could only be effective in the short term. These would include the temporary relaxation of the Sunday driving ban, the suspension of construction work on locks, and the faster approval of heavy goods transport.

He doesn’t say how the whole thing is supposed to work – he probably doesn’t know either. Lifting the Sunday driving ban will do little to free up additional capacity on the roads, as this is prevented by working hours legislation and rest period regulations. Truck traffic will probably just shift to different times of day. Halting the expansion of the locks is a brilliant idea, but whether this is actually feasible depends on the current stage of the construction work – and when is the expansion then supposed to take place? The faster approval of heavy goods transport, which is otherwise carried out by inland waterway vessels, is also a questionable measure. Many of these shipments cannot simply be loaded onto a lorry, even a heavy-goods vehicle. Often, at the point of unloading from the inland waterway vessel, plans to remove traffic lights, signage and so on have been in the pipeline for months in order to facilitate onward transport. No fast-track approval procedure will help here.

No, Bilger & Co. cannot change the weather, but the Transport Minister could do a great deal for climate protection, water protection, and climate- and environmentally-friendly transport routes.

Alois Rainer and the rain

The Federal Minister for Agriculture also has a snappy retort at the ready: “I can’t make it rain, otherwise I’d do it.” Yes, Alois isn’t a rainmaker, but he is responsible for the present and future of German agriculture. Here I need to dig a little deeper and start with a quote from Andreas Geißler, an SPD city councillor in Leipzig: “We must stop treating water like rubbish!” He’s been preaching this for years.

Here, we first need to make a distinction between different groups of people in the agricultural sector. It is not enough to talk about ‘farmers’; we must distinguish between large-scale farmers and smallholders. Incidentally, it was the former who sent their employed farm workers to the protests when the ‘traffic light’ coalition wanted to scrap subsidies for agricultural diesel. It is hardly surprising that there are no organised protests against the current agricultural policy, even though it poses a greater threat to smallholders.

In intensive large-scale farming, agricultural land was drained on a massive scale, with drainage ditches crisscrossing the fields. This was most evident on the land owned by the LPGs and KAPs in Eastern Germany. Small streams and ditches were filled in or diverted, and artificial irrigation was often used where necessary. The water came from springs and river courses that have now dried up, and where it is still available, energy prices make this form of irrigation uneconomical.

No, the Federal Minister for Agriculture cannot make it rain, but he could do something to promote organic farming.

Why is there no protest?

What are inland waterway skippers supposed to do? Blocking the waterways is pointless; nothing is getting through anyway. Moreover, they have to hope for assistance from the ministry.

It’s different for the ‘farmers’. Those who railed against Habeck now have the policy they wanted, so why protest? Small farms cannot afford to organise protests; every pair of hands and every machine is needed to minimize the damage.

Conclusion
: The two ministers, for Transport and Agriculture, have little to offer apart from snappy soundbites and measures that are of little effect even in the short term. It is time for measures that will be effective in the long term. But, as Wiebke Winter from the Climate Union said: “If we in the Union make climate change a major issue, it’s the Greens who’ll benefit in the end.” What a dilemma.