Grünen versus Verdi, the huge and costly difference between Habeck and Bonelli

In recent days theHandelsblatt named the Minister of Economy and Climate Protection “Politician of the Year”. Robert Habeck defining it “The Pragmatist of the Crisis”: “Openness, integrity, empathy, listening with an open mind, hard work and reliability in the quality of the handshake: these are the characteristics with which Robert Habeck has earned the reputation of honest mediator of all interests and pragmatic crisis manager and has achieved remarkable results”, says the German financial newspaper, highlighting how Habeck has overcome some personal convictions “for the good of the country”. The choice of the jury – made up of journalists and exponents of industry and finance – is somewhat singular, given that Habeck is the leader of the Grunenthe German Greens, a party that is traditionally not well regarded by the business world.

But if for Germany it is a singular choice, for Italy it would be unthinkable. Angelo Bonelli “Politician of the year” according to the Sole 24 Ore is something inconceivable not only because the Italian Greens will hardly be in government and, above all, in roles of great responsibility, but because Grünen and Green Europe are two radically different parties: one pragmatic and governing, the other dogmatic and oppositional. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with its ensuing energy crisis, has exposed and amplified this divergence. Although the Italian Greens claim to be inspired by the Grünen and constantly cite their German cousins ​​as a model to follow, in reality they have taken a diametrically opposite attitude on the main issues that have arisen in Italy and Germany in the same way in this crisis: military aid to Ukraine, nuclear power, use of coal, regasification plants, drilling.

In the face of the serious energy crisis, although a historic and fundamental point of the German Greens program was the phase out of civilian nuclear power by 2022Habeck by violence against his own convictions finally gave in to the risk of energy rationing and extended the life of two of the three nuclear power plants still active in Germany. If in Italy Green Europe, which presented itself in a cartel with the Italian Left (the equivalent of the Linke), carried out an electoral campaign stubbornly against the Piombino regasification terminalnecessary to allow Italy to replace gas from Russia, the ruling Greens in Germany have achieved a massive LNG plant installation plan accelerating, with a law desired by Habeck, the procedures for the construction of the plants also bypassing the environmental impact assessments.

So while in Piombino the Nimby protests and appeals to the Tar were still being discussed, on 17 December Habeck was in the port of Wilhelmshaven with the chancellor Olaf Scholz to inaugurate the first new floating regasification terminal installed in record time (ten months). In the coming days, before the end of the year, the second floating regasification terminal, that of Lubmin. While the third, that of Brunsbüttel, should be completed in January. In addition to floating ones, they are expected three large onshore regasification plants between 2025 and 2026 which should guarantee Germany further capacity for diversification and autonomy from Russia.

Unlike the absolutist approach of Italian ecologism, embodied by both the Greens and the M5s, Habeck had to deal with the “energy trilemma” which consists in having to balance environmental sustainability, energy cost and energy security. And inevitably Putin’s aggression has posed a threat to Europe, both from the point of view of energy security and costs, which has pragmatically pushed the German Greens to revise their plans. For this reason Habeck flew to Doha to sign a contract with Qatar for a 15-year supply of liquefied natural gas (the one that will be processed by the regasification plants): a journey that would have been unimaginable a year ago. Meanwhile, in Italy environmentalists were protesting similar agreements signed by the Draghi government with Algeria.

Likewise, Bonelli contested the Italian decision to reactivate coal-fired and oil-fired power plants to replace the gas. Which was exactly what Habeck did in Germany, with decisions such as allowing more coal to be mined in the village of Lutzerath, which had become a symbol of the fight against fossil fuels, arousing strong reactions from ecological movements. While Italian environmentalists oppose the drillingin Germany together with the Netherlands have been unlocked projects of gas extraction in the North Sea.

At the bottom of energy policy decisions there is a radical difference on foreign policy and on the attitude to have towards Russia. In Italy, the Greens, for example, voted against NATO membership of Sweden and Finland and are strongly against sending arms to Ukraine. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbockco-leader of the Greens with Habeck, as well as having supported the entry of Sweden and Finland into the Atlantic Alliance was with a decision in favor of military support to Ukraine, also overcoming the initial hesitations of Scholz and the Spd. Habeck, returning from a trip to Kyiv, called for defensive weapons to be sent to Ukraine as late as May 2021nearly a year before Putin’s all-out invasion.

Some pragmatic or contradictory choices for an environmentalist and pacifist party, such as the use of coal and weapons, depend on the awareness of the threat an autocratic regime based on hydrocarbons such as Putin’s Russia imposes on the European economy and liberal democratic institutions. On this the Grünen have always had a different vision from the traditional left of the SPD (it is no coincidence that the green Joschka Fischer he had been enlisted for the “anti-Russian” Nabucco pipeline while Gerhard Schröder had been contracted by Gazprom for Nord Stream 2).

Habeck and the German Greens have not given up on their ideals, they have rearranged their program on the basis of new priorities and the consequences of their choices. In short, we are close to the Weberian distinction between ethics of responsibility and ethics of conviction, between what distinguishes the politician “from the mere amateur who agitates in a sterile way”. We have the Greens of the second kind.

• Luciano Capone

• Grew up in Irpinia, in Savignano. Studies in Milan, Catholic University. Liberal by training, journalist by deformation. Al Foglio first as a reader, then a collaborator, finally an editor. I mainly deal with economics, but also with politics, investigations, culture, miscellaneous and possible