Germany to get a new coalition government for Weihnachten
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrat Party and its sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, cut a deal on Wednesday with the center-left Social Democrats to form a coalition government that is pledging some serious new spending in Germany.
“There’s going to be more spending on what’s called the energiewende here in Germany — that’s switching from nuclear to solar and wind,” says the BBC’s Steve Evans in Berlin of what changes Germans can expect under the new government. “Chancellor Merkel, just after Fukushima, said the country’s nuclear power stations would close. And, that is obviously a huge job — a reengineering of the whole economy. There’s been some criticism of rising costs, but she’s said, right out, ‘We’re going to keep balancing the budgets.’ And then she said again, ‘We’re going to keep balancing the budgets. Point three: There will be no rise in taxes on the rich. So, some spending, but no real change in economic policy.”
To hear how the German government plans to pay for energiewende, click the audio player above.
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