> see also: Germany: radioactive waste problems (separate file)
> see also: German Greens: war, welfare etc. (separate file)
> see also Lisa MacDonald's 'Green Politics at an Impasse' (separate file)

"The sad thing is we no longer have a real opposition to the nuclear lobby. The current agreement is not a compromise - it's worse than what we had before. It really is a pact with the nuclear industry - they can continue to produce radioactive waste without a permanent storage site. For us it's been a tough blow the way the Greens have betrayed the anti-nuclear movement."-- Edelgart Krafer, described as head of Dannenburg's anti-nuclear movement by Deutsche Welle radio on November 21, 2001, discussing the sham nuclear 'phase-out' agreement negotiated between the SPD/Greens federal government and nuclear utilities.

The final shutdown of Germany's oldest reactor, Obrigheim, has been postponed by two years until 2005 when the coalition partners of the new German government reached an agreement on the controversial issue during the negotiations for a new government coalition. Delayed closure is in principle allowed in the nuclear phaseout agreement but has been criticized by delegates of the Green Party, one of the parties in Germany's new government after the elections of 22 September.

(575.5450) WISE Amsterdam - After months of so called "consensus talks" between electricity utilities and the German government (a Social Democrats/Green Party coalition) an agreement was reached on 14 June 2000 on the phaseout of nuclear energy in Germany (see WISE News Communique 532.5186: "Germany: government and utilities reach agreement on phaseout"). According to the phaseout agreement each reactor was allowed to produce a specified amount of electricity after which it has to be closed. Obrigheim is the oldest reactor (started operation in 1968) and therefore the first candidate to be closed, which was expected for early 2003 (as of last week a "credit" of 1,02 terawatt-hours (TWh) remained, enough for 80 days of operation).

As federal elections were held in September 2002, the electricity utilities could have hoped for a new (Christian-Democrats led) government, which might possibly soften the conditions of the phaseout agreement. This did not happen: although the Social Democrats lost seats, the Greens gained seats and so the Red-Green majority remained. Coalition talks were started to form a new Red-Green government.

Although Obrigheim's "credits" started to run out, the phaseout agreement includes possibilities to transfer remaining electricity amounts from one reactor to another. The transfer from older to newer reactors and smaller to bigger reactors is allowed as these transfers would bring closer the shutdown dates of these older and smaller NPPs. The transfer of electricity amounts from newer to older NPPs is only allowed after agreement by the federal government (chancellor and ministers of Environment and Economics) and the electricity utilities.

A government spokesman recently admitted that chancellor Schroeder had promised the night after the phaseout agreement was signed to allow delayed closure for Obrigheim. Without such a promise on the Obrigheim issue the industry would have refused to sign the agreement. But a spokesman of Green environment minister Trittin denied that he was aware of Schroeder's promise.

On 26 September, four days after the elections, Obrigheim owner EnBW formally applied for a delayed closure by transferring 15 TWh of electricity amounts from its Neckarwestheim II reactor to Obrigheim. That would be enough to operate Obrigheim at least until 2007, after the next federal elections.

The transfer of 15 TWh from Neckarwestheim II was not agreed in the coalition negotiations but on 14 October, the Ministry of Environment announced that Obrigheim could operate for another two years by transfering 5,5 TWh of electricity from the Philippsburg I NPP.

Although owner EnBW did not succeed in getting "credits" to operate Obrigheim until 2007 it ought to be satisfied with the present result of two more years. EnBW plans to sell shares in the company and any extra income is welcome. Besides, the future expense of dismantling the reactor can be postponed.

For the Green Party, the agreement on Obrigheim is a defeat as it has always strived for the shutdown of the "Schrottreaktor" (junk reactor). Greenpeace fears that now the government has agreed with the postponement of Obrigheim's closure it might be difficult to refuse other requests from the utilities. This could then lead to credits being shifted from one reactor to another, postponing the closure of several reactors.

Environment minister Trittin is especially criticized as Obrigheim is presently operating without a proper license. Parts of the reactor were constructed in a way that did not correspond with the original licensed drawings. Yet the reactor is allowed to operate while the government conducts a procedure to investigate whether the law has been violated.

The government coalition agreement was signed on 16 October. The Greens are holding a delegates conference in Bremen on 18 October to approve the coalition agreement. Opponents of the Obrigheim deal in the Green Party are introducing a resolution at this conference, demanding the closure of the reactor in 2003. "Obrigheim will prove what the phaseout agreement is worth - or not", says the resolution.

Sources: phaseout agreement, 14 June 2000; Die Tageszeitung online, 9 and 11 October 2002; Spiegel online, 7, 9 and 14 October 2002; Press release Ministry of Environment, 14 October 2002; website Ministry of Environment (www.bmu.de). Contact: WISE Amsterdam

FRANKFURT - Germany's atomic power lobby said yesterday that, despite massive protests by anti-nuclear activists, there was no alternative to controversial overland shipments of nuclear waste.

The German Atomic Forum (ATF) said the transports, from a French reprocessing plant to a storage site in north Germany, were enshrined in an accord last year with the Berlin government to gradually phase out nuclear power.

"We regret the massive protests regarding the transport of reprocessed waste from France to Germany, but Germany's transport commitments are legally binding and cannot be circumvented," said Christian Wilson, spokesman for the Forum.

"The government fully supports this view."

Germany's nuclear industry - whose 19 plants generate a third of the country's electricity - fought a tough rearguard action after Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder came to power in 1998 pledging to scrap nuclear power.
Threatening massive damages claims, the industry sought to keep its nuclear plants operating for as long as possible, eventually settling for a deal to shut off the last reactor by around 2025.

Significantly, the nuclear pullout accord has not yet been ratified by parliament and there remains a risk that it could unravel, one environmental expert warned.

"It is not certain that this compromise will hold," said Christof Timpe of the Oeko Institut in Freiburg. "The relevant contracts have not yet been signed."

NO EARLY SHUTDOWN

The nuclear industry was unimpressed by environmentalists' efforts to force an early nuclear shutdown by rendering the shipments unviable - both politically and financially.

But, three days into the protests, there was no doubting that the activists had scored a publicity coup by delaying the arrival of six "Castor" containers and tying up 20,000 police in one of Germany's biggest peacetime security operations.

Germany has no reprocessing facilities of its own, and around 15 more such transports are expected at a rate of about two a year until 2005. Protesters say they create dangers of radioactive contamination.

Petra Uhlmann, spokeswoman at utility E.ON , said there was "no reason to put pressure on the government. We assume the transports will be carried out." E.ON has interests in 12 of Germany's nuclear plants.
In last year's nuclear consensus deal with Berlin's centre-left govenrment, the industry won guarantees that reprocessed waste may be transported back to Germany until 2005.

By then, utilities plan to have built interim storage facilities directly at their plants to avoid such transports.
Reprocessing is just one - lucrative and space-saving - option of dealing with atomic waste and is currently estimated to cover 10 percent of German atomic waste volumes.

The interim sites will allow nuclear waste to cool down for a required 30-40 years before going into a permanent and final repository, which has yet to be chosen and prepared for usage.

The utilities would have to build these sites at costs of around 50 to 100 million marks each, although central storage sites at Gorleben and Ahaus, near the Dutch border, could hold all of the nuclear waste until final decommissioning.

German power company executives from E.ON, RWE, EnBW and HEW, have signed an agreement with the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, over the shutdown of the country's 19 operating reactors.

Stade KKS will be the first plant to be closed, in 2003, with the others following over the next 20 years or more.

Chief executive officer of RWE, Dr Dietmar Kuhnt, said that, by signing the agreement, "the German power industry pursues a clear aim: it intends to use nuclear energy for as long as possible without any political interference. The federal government has guaranteed the undisturbed operation of nuclear power plants as well as the management of nuclear waste."

The agreement is based on last year's compromise deal worked out between the industry and environment minister Jürgen Trittin. The opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has said it would reverse the decision if it won next year's elections.

As part of the agreement, RWE agreed to refrain from recommissioning the controversial Mülheim-Kärlich plant. The company has since filed an application with the Environmental Ministry of Rhineland-Palatinate for dismantling the plant. Around 175 employees are presently involved in post-operation and preparatory activities for the shutdown of Mülheim-Kärlich. Dismantling is expected to commence in 2003, and is likely to take ten years.

Attacking the German Greens is like shooting fish in a barrel - but why bother? The answer is simple enough: the German Greens have successfully spread confusion amongst environmentalists and anti-nuclear campaigners. Worse still, in the nuclear debate, the arguments trotted out by the German Greens are in many cases precisely the same arguments advanced by the nuclear industry to justify its nefarious activities.

A number of Green party members (most of them members of the Australian Greens) responded to a critique of the German Greens published in Green Left Weekly #444 on an open e-mail list hosted by the Australian Greens (<http://www.altnews.com.au/Greens>, search for ‘German’ or ‘Greens’ in the Green-Global list).

There is some awareness within the Greens that their German partners have sold-out, with one member of the Australian Greens noting that the German Greens “have not only failed to put reasonable deadlines for the closure of the German [nuclear power] industry but they then attempted to stop, or limit, the protests by those who took a genuinely anti-nuclear position.”

However, a majority of the Green party contributors to the e-mail debate have sided with the German Greens. Even allowing for the loose style of discussion on e-mail lists, it must be said that the arguments raised in support of the German Greens have been underwhelming.

At worst, defending the German Greens is an article of faith rather than a matter for debate and analysis: “There's no point pretending that criticisms of the German Greens are not trotted out regularly. We're a stronger party for being able to explain why we support our German comrades.”

‘Not in my back yard’

The argument most frequently trotted out by the German Greens and their apologists is that it would be irresponsible and ‘nimbyish’ for Germany to refuse the return of nuclear reprocessing wastes from Cogema’s reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, or from the British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) plant at Sellafield.

One contributor to the e-mail debate argued: “Is it OK for France to be the dumping ground for German radioactive waste ... and are west-bound convoys somehow safer than east-bound ones? ... And what is so "genuinely anti-nuclear" about refusing the return of Germany's own nuclear waste, then sitting on your hands when Germany's nuclear waste is sent off to France ...? (In fact, there were protests, both in Germany and in France: but they were on a much smaller scale, and they were organised by the German and French Green parties. Oh, and they got a whole lot less media coverage. Got an explanation for that ...? Have a think.)”

However, there’s nothing ‘nimbyish’ or unprincipled in opposing the waste shipments. The German Social Democratic Party (SPD) / Greens coalition government and the German nuclear industry have been willing to accept the return of reprocessing wastes from Cogema and BNFL for the simple reason that that was a precondition for sending more spent fuel to Cogema and BNFL for reprocessing. That, in turn, facilitates the ongoing operation of power reactors ... and the production of ever-more radioactive waste for which there is no satisfactory disposal option.

In short, the resumption of waste shipments is a win-win situation for European nuclear utilities and a lose-lose situation for everyone else in Germany, France and the UK. As Jochen Stay noted in the February 16 news communique of the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), "First they [the German SPD/Greens government] insist that it is immoral to leave 'German' waste in France and then they allow 500 more spent fuel transports to be sent to La Hague in the next 5 years. So much for 'national responsibility'!"

In different circumstances, it might be appropriate for reprocessing wastes (and/or unreprocessed spent fuel) to be returned from La Hague and Sellafield to Germany. That might be appropriate if, for example, the SPD/Greens government kept its promise to ban the reprocessing of German-origin spent fuel from January 1, 2000. However, those circumstances simply do not apply.

Recently, a report commissioned by Greens leader and German environment minister Jurgen Trittin (reported in the June 1 WISE news communique) found that radioactive discharges at Sellafield are 20 times over the allowable limit for German nuclear plants. For Cogema, the discharges have reached seven times German limits. Professor Alexander Rossnagel from Kassel University, an expert on nuclear law, said on the German TV program REPORT MAINZ on May 28 that Germany may be violating Section 9 of the German nuclear energy law which states that nuclear waste must be disposed of "without causing damage".

When Trittin was asked on REPORT MAINZ about the legality of reprocessing at Sellafield, he said, "It is legal under British law." When asked if it is legal from a German point of view, he said, "German law does not apply in Great Britain." Now that's nimbyism.

As for protests against waste shipments from Germany to France, did the German Greens really organise protests against waste shipments from Germany to France? If so, how can this be reconciled with the fact that such shipments are allowed for in the nuclear ‘consensus agreement’ which the German Greens helped negotiate? Are the German Greens organising protests against their own policies?! Not likely. Moreover, if not for the SPD/Greens government’s decision to allow waste shipments to resume, there would be no waste shipments to or from Germany.

As for the sarcastic comment on the Greens e-mail list about the relative safety of east- and west-bound waste shipments, surely this argument also applies to the German Greens. As Jochen Stay noted in the February 16 WISE news communique, it is “questionable whether a Castor [waste container] is safer now just because the current Environment Minister carries a Green Party membership card."

Another problem with the ‘nimby’ argument is that it easily slides into an argument for public liability for corporate pollution. Gaby Luft  (Green Left Weekly #452 - letters) falls into this trap in her response to my critique of the German Greens (in Green Left Weekly #444). Luft says, “at least the Greens and the German government had the decency to take proper responsibility for what they had created”, and she asks, “what solution does your paper and its writers offer” in relation to radioactive waste?

The waste is not a ‘French’ problem or a ‘German’ problem - and it certainly isn’t Green Left Weekly’s problem! It is a problem which nuclear utilities have created and are therefore responsible for. And every waste management option carries significant environmental and public risks - hence the importance of preventing further waste production.

Protests

Another bone of contention is whether the German Greens actually did oppose the protests against a resumption of waste shipments. A contributor on the Greens e-mail list asserted: “I am truly appalled at the level of debate on this list. Where do you get your info from ...?  The German Greens attempt to stop or limit the protests? Would you like to show us your source for this fascinating bit of info?”

In fact, there is abundant evidence for the claim, all of it widely reported. For example, the motion passed at a national congress of the German Greens in Stuttgart on March 10 has been widely publicised. The motion urged Greens not to build or support "actions, demonstrations or blockades that are directed against the nuclear consensus".

Laughably, the German Greens not only opposed the mass protests which aimed to stop the waste shipments, but they urged people to ‘protest’ in support of the ‘consensus agreement’ and thus, by implication, the waste shipments and the state violence against anti-nuclear campaigners. Equally laughable was the use of so-called "conflict managers" to attempt to diffuse protests.

Another argument advanced on the Greens e-mail list is that it’s a bit rich for outsiders to be second-guessing the decisions of the German Greens as expressed at the Stuttgart congress: “It's a bit presumptive for us to comment on the democratic decisions of the German party membership. Any chance that they understand better than we do the dilemma between pragmatic outcomes and ideological posturing?”

However, the Stuttgart congress was the sort of stage-managed sham ‘democracy’ typical of bourgeois political parties. Anti-nuclear campaigners were refused entrance to the congress but demonstrated outside. Moreover, the choice is not between “pragmatic outcomes and ideological posturing”; the choice was (and is) between mass action which could have (and could still) uproot the nuclear industry, and the parliamentary cretinism of the German Greens.

If party democracy is important (and it is), then why was foreign minister and Greens leader Joschka Fischer not censured or expelled for announcing to a 1999 party congress that he would disobey the party if it advocated a unilateral stop to the NATO bombing on Serbia and Kosova?

Nuclear ‘phase-out’

Another argument put forward in support of the German Greens on the Greens e-mail list is that the ‘consensus agreement’ is better than nothing: “Would Schroeder's Social Democrats have agreed to ANY [nuclear] phase-out without pressure from the Greens?”, asked a member of the Australian Greens.

However, the consensus agreement is not better than nothing; it is worse than useless. The consensus agreement involved any number of broken Green promises:
- a broken promise to close the two oldest reactors within the SPD/Greens’ first term of government
- a broken promise to end reprocessing from January 1, 2000; and, among others,
- a broken promise for "comprehensive and irreversible” legislation on a nuclear phase-out (this metamorphosed into the ‘consensus agreement’ for a protracted phase-out, the announcement of which saw the share prices of nuclear utilities rise by 4-5% according to reports in the UK Guardian and elsewhere).

Moreover, the ‘wins’ in the ‘consensus agreement’ are empty. The agreement of the nuclear utilities not to build new reactors means nothing - the head of a German nuclear utility acknowledged that building new reactors was "no longer economically viable now anyway".

Likewise, an agreement that plutonium extracted from the reprocessing of spent fuel by BNFL or Cogema will be ‘recycled’ to reduce the risk of it being used in nuclear weapons is, at best, a pyrrhic victory. The recycling of plutonium, and the expansion of the civil plutonium industry, is one of the most dangerous developments in the nuclear industry around the world in recent years, both from an environmental and a non-proliferation standpoint. It assumes and accepts the production of plutonium (in power reactors) and the separation of plutonium in reprocessing plants. Plutonium can easily be extracted from mixed uranium/plutonium oxide fuel (MOX).

Anti-nuclear activists (other than those succumbing to the gobbledeegook of the German Greens) are unanimous in the opinion that plutonium ought not be produced in the first place and that it is better to leave plutonium in spent fuel rather than ‘recycling’ it, because it is much more difficult to separate plutonium from MOX than from spent fuel.

(A related scandal erupted last September when Fischer announced that he would not prohibit the sale of a MOX fabrication plant from a German nuclear utility to Russia.)

Gaby Luft argues that the consensus agreement “was the best compromise the Greens could have achieved in these drastic circumstances. ... [T]he greens argued long and hard in every way possible and while this might not be the ideal outcome, it was the closest agreement that was likely to get full support in parliament.“

However, the evidence suggests that the German Greens were more than willing to bow to industry demands. For example, Michaele Hustedt, a federal German Green parliamentarian, said in 1999: "The nucleus of our phase out-strategy is 'compromise'. ... If we would ban reprocessing immediately, we could do that without having to pay any damage claims, because of the failure [of German nuclear corporations] to provide a proved [waste] disposal concept. But we won't do that. We have decided to phase out in consensus, because we strongly believe that it is better for the Government but also for the electricity utilities to phase out in consent and not in dissent."

A shame that welfare cuts and increased consumption taxes (some dressed up as ‘eco-taxes’) have not also been made contingent on the acceptance of those effected by them.

In other debates - most notably pension reductions - the Greens have not been forced, kicking and screaming, into accepting reactionary coalition government policies, but have instead been further to the right than the SPD.

Better than nothing?

A corollary of the argument that the nuclear ‘consensus agreement’ is better than nothing is the argument that if the German Greens pulled out of the coalition government, that would simply open the door for a coalition government between the SPD and the right-wing Free Democratic Party.

Again, this is a false choice: the real choice is between mass action which could have (and could still) uproot the nuclear industry, and the parliamentary cretinism of the German Greens. Mass protests forced a suspension of waste shipments from 1998 until March 2001 - and it is notable that it was a conservative Christian Democrat Union government that was forced to suspend waste shipments in 1998.

Despite the antics of the German Greens, mass protests may force another suspension of waste shipments. That, in turn, would speed the closure of reactors (whose operators would choke on their growing waste stockpiles and consequently face licensing difficulties) as well as creating numerous problems for BNFL’s and Cogema’s reprocessing operations.

That in turn, would create problems for reactor operators around the world, among them the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), which operates the research reactor in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights.

ANSTO is sending its spent fuel to Cogema. The head of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, John Loy, said last year that spent fuel arrangements would need to be "written in blood" before he issued a license to construct a new reactor at Lucas Heights.

It will be difficult enough for Loy to justify granting a reactor construction license, and it would be still more difficult if not for the life-line thrown to Cogema by the German SPD/Greens government. A report in the May 26, 2000 WISE news communique noted, “Without the German orders both reprocessing plants (Cogema and BNFL] could hardly survive. ... Germany is La Hague's biggest customer.” A spokesperson from Greenpeace Germany has also suggested that the SPD/Greens government could have sounded the “death knell” for Cogema by keeping its promise to ban reprocessing from January 1, 2000.

As things stand, we have a ‘promise’ to end reprocessing of German-origin spent fuel from 2005. What odds that will be another broken promise?

Parliamentarism

The Greens used to be a progressive force in German politics, but the evidence strongly suggests they are now scarcely, if at all, better than the SPD (and on some issues, worse).

The key lesson is that the incorporation of the German Greens into the political establishment is not an aberration but a logical consequence of their politics.

If the aim of getting Green bums on parliamentary seats subordinates all other aims, as it has in the German Greens, it makes sense to scale down campaigning work and focus heavily or exclusively on electoral manoeuvring.

If the aim is getting Greens bums on parliamentary seats, it makes sense to parrot corporate myths about building a green, user-friendly capitalism - all the better to attract more conservative voters as well as corporate sponsorship (the tobacco company Reemtsma sponsored a German Greens conference in Leipzig in the late 1990s).

If the aim is getting Green bums on parliamentary seats, it makes sense for party democracy to give way to undemocratic (‘streamlined’) decision-making procedures.

If the aim is getting Green bums on parliamentary seats, it makes sense to drive leftists out of the party ... to "get rid of the rubbish" as a section of the Young German Greens put it in 1999.

If the aim is getting Green bums on parliamentary seats, it makes sense to encourage personality cults around people like Joschka Fischer (who plays the ‘prodigal son’ role to perfection).

And since the aim is keeping Green bums on parliamentary seats, it made sense for Fischer to shore up his credentials as a “responsible” foreign minister by expressing his “understanding” of the recent bombing of Iraq by the US and Britain, and for the German Greens co-leader Fritz Kuhn to hose down the ensuing public disgust and outrage by saying he recognised that Fischer “faced constraints” as foreign minister.

With the German Greens support for the March 26-29 shipment of high-level waste from France to Gorleben, they have ditched all four elements of their original platform - environmental sustainability, disarmament, social justice and democracy.

Six Castor containers - each with about 10 tonnes of vitrified wastes arising from the reprocessing of spent fuel from power reactors - were taken by train from Cogema's reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, to Dannenberg in Germany. At Dannenberg, the waste was put on trucks for a 20 km road journey to Gorleben, where a salt mine is being used as a 'temporary' radioactive waste dump.

In the weeks preceding the shipment, tens of thousands protesters participated in what a March 24 Reuters report described as a "wave" of protests across Germany. Along the route of the waste train, thousands of people protested with many attempting to stop or delay the train.

Within minutes of the train crossing the French/German border near Karlsruhe, the first of many arrests took place, with police dragging 39 protesters off the tracks and charging 14 with resisting arrest. The waste train was delayed on several other occasions by protesters sitting on, or cementing or chaining themselves to, the tracks.

Protesters focused their efforts on the 50 km stretch linking Luneburg and Dannenberg. As the waste train pulled into Luneburg on March 27, about 1500 demonstrators stormed through police cordons and sat down on the line. According to the March 28 UK Independent, "The authorities' new secret weapon - "conflict managers" - unsurprisingly failed to get them to move. Riot police were then sent in, helicopters appeared and a convoy of water cannons menacingly trundled past. Meanwhile, forests along the length of the line were teeming with youths ... As police vans raced from one trouble spot to the next, demonstrators would reappear elsewhere to occupy another section of the railway line."

The train detoured to avoid the university city of Goettingen, where hundreds of people had formed a human chain across the railway station.

About 20,000 police were involved in the counter-operation. On March 23, police broke up two camps of activists on private land near the railway between Luneburg and Dannenberg. On the waste train were carriages bearing a total of about 1200 riot police. For the final stage of the waste trip, police sealed off the road from Dannenberg to Gorleben with barbed wire. On March 28, protesters faced police in riot gear with a line of armoured cars. Some of the 30 water cannons deployed in the operation were used in the freezing conditions to drive back thousands of protesters as they tried to storm Dannenberg railway station.

Thousands of tonnes of German-origin spent fuel and reprocessing wastes remain at La Hague, and the German and French governments plan two shipments annually for the foreseeable future. Although the six Castor waste containers arrived at their destination, the political cost to the German and French governments, and the financial cost of the operation - over 10 million German marks (A$9.3 million) according to the March 28 UK Independent - have jeopardised future shipments.

The transfer of reprocessing wastes to Gorleben has nothing to do with responsible management of radioactive waste; it is a politically-expedient way of 'solving' a problem for German nuclear power corporations with limited spent fuel storage capacity. The shipments are designed to facilitate the production of ever-more radioactive waste in Germany, for which there is no satisfactory long-term disposal solution.

Cogema will not accept further spent fuel for reprocessing unless reprocessing wastes are returned to Germany. As a result of the waste shipment to Gorleben in late March, German nuclear corporations will shortly resume spent fuel shipments to Cogema. Cogema's motives are similar to those of the German nuclear corporations: it must get rid of reprocessing wastes in order to assure the future of its reprocessing operations.

Public opposition to waste shipments is also driven by the environmental and public health risks they pose. In 1998 it was revealed that many Castor containers had travelled across Europe emitting far more radiation than was permitted for about a decade. The radiation limit recommended by the International Atomic Energy Agency was exceeded in a number of cases, sometimes by a factor of more than 100. Nuclear corporations and regulatory authorities knew about the contamination for years but kept quiet about the problem.

As a result of the contamination scandal and the public reaction to it, the German Christian Democrat Union (CDU) government was barely able to keep the spent fuel transports going and was forced to call a halt to all Castor rail transports in 1998. The March 26-29 Castor shipment was the first since 1998.

'Consensus nonsense'

The German Greens became the junior partner in government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in late 1998. Both the Greens and the SPD campaigned on phasing out nuclear power, and after the election the coalition agreement between the Greens and the SPD included the phasing out of nuclear power.

Legislation was promised within 100 days of the SPD and Greens forming government. In the end it took about 600 days, and instead of legislation the SPD/Greens government came to a 'consensus agreement' with nuclear corporations on June 14, 2000.

The agreement was hailed as a "great victory" by Australian Greens' Senator Bob Brown. However, most commentators believe it was a great victory for the nuclear corporations and deride the agreement as 'consensus nonsense'. The share price of German nuclear corporations rose by 4-5% immediately after the consensus agreement was reached (according to reports in the UK Guardian and elsewhere).

The industry-funded Uranium Information Centre (Australia) noted approvingly in its June 16, 2000, newsletter that the agreement "secures the uninterrupted operation of the nuclear plants for many years ahead".

Previously, the German Greens had called for a "clearly defined schedule for the end of atomic power". However, the June 14 consensus agreement does not specify the timeline of the phase-out; instead, it puts a cap on the lifetime output of all 19 operating reactors, equivalent to an average reactor lifetime of 32 years. According to a June 16, 2000 Reuters report, "the sandal-wearing ecologist activists of yesteryear - now the Greens coalition partner in government - will be in slippers by the time the last German nuclear power plant is shut down."

No new reactors will be built under the consensus agreement, but the head of a German nuclear power corporation acknowledged that building new reactors was "no longer economically viable now anyway".

A Greens' demand for the closure of the two oldest reactors before the 2002 national election was dropped during negotiations. A Greens' proposal for a new input tax on nuclear fuel was also dropped by SPD and Greens' leaders.

Roland Koch, one of the CDU's regional leaders, said: "It's nonsense to speak about a consensus between government and industry. As soon as the CDU and the Free Democrats win the next election, the consensus will vanish."

In January 1999, the SPD/Greens government announced that it had decided to ban the reprocessing of the Germany's spent fuel from January 1, 2000. The Greens hailed the decision as an "about turn for nuclear energy" but it turned out to be yet another broken promise. The consensus agreement allows reprocessing to continue until July 1, 2005; after that date disposal of spent fuel will be restricted to direct transport to a (non-existent) final storage site.

The Greens capitulation on nuclear power was all the more problematic because a rapid phase-out could easily be achieved. Michaele Hustedt, a federal Green parliamentarian, said in 1999 that, "The nucleus of our phase out-strategy is 'compromise'. ... If we would ban reprocessing immediately, we could do that without having to pay any damage claims, because of the failure [of German nuclear corporations] to provide a proved disposal concept. But we won't do that. We have decided to phase out in consensus, because we strongly believe, that it is better for the Government but also for the electricity utilities to phase out in consent and not in dissent."

The SPD/Greens government could have brought about a rapid end to nuclear power either by legislating to that end or alternatively by refusing to allow further shipments of spent fuel to Cogema or to British Nuclear Fuels Limited's Sellafield reprocessing plant. The government chose the consensus agreement instead, and as a consequence supports the resumption of spent fuel shipments to France and Britain, and the return of reprocessing wastes to Germany.

The Greens voted by an overwhelming majority at a party conference at Stuttgart on March 10 to oppose blockades of the upcoming waste shipment. The motion passed by the congress urged Greens not to build or support "actions, demonstrations or blockades that are directed against the nuclear consensus". Anti-nuclear campaigners were refused entrance to the conference but demonstrated outside.

Optimistically, the Stuttgart resolution urged demonstrations in support of the consensus agreement (and thus, implicitly, the resumption of waste shipments).

The Greens are attempting to disarm and disorient both the mass public opposition to waste shipments and the mass protests which are infinitely more likely to bring about the end of nuclear power than the Greens' 'consensus nonsense'.

In a February 6 letter from environment minister and Greens leader Jurgen Trittin to Green party organisations in Lower Saxony, he bluntly attacked plans to blockade the waste shipment. "Just because somebody sits on his backside on a street doesn't mean we agree with it", Trittin declared. "The party leadership thinks that the protests against the transport of nuclear waste are ... politically wrong. Not because we reject blockages, demonstrations or singing, but because we reject the aims that are to be achieved by this sitting, walking and singing", Trittin continued.

Ironically, Trittin is widely regarded as the de facto leader of the Greens' left faction. Worse luck for him, protesters had little interest in sitting on their backsides, or walking or singing: they were far more interested in a mass blockade of the waste shipment - in which aim they succeeded insofar as future shipments are in jeopardy as a result of the political and economic costs of the March 26-29 shipment - as a step towards ending nuclear power.

An argument advanced by the Greens is that it would be unfair on French people for Germany to refuse to accept reprocessing wastes arising from spent fuel irradiated in reactors in Germany. "We have legal and political obligations. We can't simply dump our waste on our next-door neighbor's doorstep", Trittin told the Stuttgart congress.

There's nothing novel in this argument, which attempts to divide French and German people (and anti-nuclear campaigners) from one another: nuclear corporations have been using similar divide-and-rule tactics for decades. In the current situation, the tactic could never work because it is clear that Cogema wants to get rid of reprocessing wastes in order to continue (and possibly expand) its reprocessing operations, while German nuclear corporations want to get rid of spent fuel in order to facilitate the generation of ever-more spent fuel. Waste shipments represent a win-win situation for German and French nuclear interests and a lose-lose situation for everyone else.

Jochen Stay said in the February 16 news communique of the World Information Service on Energy (WISE), "First they [Trittin and others in the German SPD/Greens government] insist that it is immoral to leave 'German' waste in France and then they allow 500 more spent fuel transports to be sent to La Hague in the next 5 years. So much for 'national responsibility'!"

The Greens also hoped the public would believe that the waste shipment would be safely managed. However, the contamination scandals revealed in 1998 are still fresh in people's minds. In 1997, a train carrying four flasks of German spent nuclear fuel derailed near the French/German border. In early March 2001, a train carrying spent nuclear fuel flasks derailed as it arrived at Torness power station in Scotland.

Jochen Stay noted in the February 16 WISE news communique, "Now the transport ban is coming to an end, but it is still questionable whether a Castor is safer now just because the current Environment Minister carries a Green Party membership card."

Platitudes about safe and responsible management of radioactive waste were further undermined in February, when a scandal broke on the front pages of the German and French press regarding secret waste shipments. The German company DWK, acting for a consortium of nuclear corporations, organised the trucking of four mixed uranium/plutonium (MOX) waste batches from a disused fuel production plant at Hanau in Germany to Cogema. The trucks moved the waste - comprising 3927 kgs of uranium and 154 kgs of plutonium - in August and September last year. The legality of Cogema's storage of this material, in the absence of a license to reprocess it, has been the subject of court action.

(On 12 December 1990, an explosion injured two workers at the Hanau MOX fabrication plant and after three cases of plutonium contamination by inhalation, the plant was shut down on 18 June 1991 by order of Joschka Fischer, then environment minister in the state of Hesse. Since Fischer became federal foreign minister in 1998, German environmentalists and anti-nuclear campaigners have been fighting plans to sell components of the Hanau MOX facility to Russia.)

An even more creative 'solution' to the radioactive waste problem has been to pretend it doesn't exist. A shipment of spent fuel from the Neckarwestheim nuclear plant to a temporary storage point in Ahaus was delayed indefinitely in January when Trittin announced that the waste would not be counted when calculating whether the total quantity of radioactive materials on site had reached the limit specified in the site license. In the words of a spokesperson from the Neckarwestheim nuclear company, the waste was to be considered "fictitious".

While it may be tempting to classify a larger portion of the radioactive waste stockpile as 'fictitious', this will not change the fact that spent fuel storage capacity at a number of nuclear plants is reaching capacity. At Neckarwestheim, for example, storage is close to capacity and the future operation of the plant depends on spent fuel removal or increasing on-site storage capacity. Closure of the Neckarwestheim reactor would be in breach of a clause in the 'consensus agreement' specifying that no reactor should be taken off the grid because of waste disposal problems; thus a problem for the nuclear power corporation has become a problem for the SPD/Greens government.

The German government and nuclear industry may opt for growing stockpiles at nuclear power plants, or ongoing reliance on 'temporary' storage sites like Gorleben and Ahaus, or they may attempt to establish a permanent central facility, or they may renege on the consensus agreement clause which prohibits reprocessing from July 2005. Whichever way they turn, it remains the case that there is no long-term solution for high-level radioactive waste disposal.

The strategy of the nuclear corporations and their political allies is to narrowly frame the debate as a choice between various environmentally unacceptable options. But the issue of closing nuclear power plants cannot so easily be taken off the political agenda, not least because the SPD and the Greens put it firmly on the agenda in the lead-up to the 1998 election.

Jochen Stay argued in the February 16 WISE news communique, " 'Fictitious' storage (as in Trittin's directive), on-site storage and transports to Ahaus offer no solution to the problem of radioactive waste for future generations, even though in the current debate they are portrayed as a set of alternatives we must choose between. All these measures serve only to solve the lack of storage capacity so that the nuclear waste mountain can keep growing. They do not deal with the current waste, which "must go somewhere", but instead create space for waste that is yet to be produced. The measures are designed to ensure that the plants can continue to run for decades to come, without offering the slightest idea of how to deal responsibly with their radioactive inheritance. The task of the anti-nuclear movement is to shift the debate. The key question is not transport versus interim storage; it is whether the plants should keep going or be shut down."

Capitalist austerity and corporate welfare with a green gloss

The Greens betrayal of the anti-nuclear movement is just the latest sell-out of their stated principles of environmental sustainability, disarmament, social justice and democracy.

What is remarkable is the Greens’ ability to put a green gloss on anti-social and anti-environmental policies. In February 1999, Martin Hufner, chief economist with Germany's second largest bank, said the Greens were "emerging as the voice of economic reason in a number of areas ... In fact, the Greens and their pragmatic leader, foreign minister Joschka Fischer, are quite fiscally conservative, more so in many ways than the Social Democrats."

Hufner said the Greens are applying the concept of sustainability to economic and social policy. He cited the opposition of the Greens to pension increases, justified with references to "generational equity" - one of the buzz words of ecologically sustainable development. The Greens argue that it would be unwise to add to the financial burden of future generations by increasing pensions.

The Greens emphasis on technology to solve environmental problems dove-tails with corporate welfare packages and corporate tax cuts; it is argued that financially weak companies cannot make the necessary investments in new technologies to protect the environment.

Increased taxes on fuel and power, introduced on 1999, have been sold as "eco-taxes" but are having a disproportionate impact on low-income earners while largely exempting business and having little beneficial impact on the environment.

Massive cuts in state spending - affecting pensioners and the unemployed in particular - have been supported by the Greens and justified with reference to green catch-phrases such as thrift, resourcefulness and autonomy.

A leader of the Greens argued that Germans should be allowed to fly to their vacation destinations only once every five years, in order to reduce the use of jet fuel. Welcoming this suggestion, Hufner said, "From the standpoint of global competitiveness, Germans certainly do spend too much time on vacation."

Disarmament and non-violence

The Green shibboleths of disarmament and non-violence have also been ditched. In the lead up to the 1998 election, the Greens’ election program states the aim of a "de-militarization of politics - all the way to the abolishment of the army and the dissolution of NATO". Within months of becoming a partner in the coalition government, the Greens supported NATO's attacks on Serbia and Kosova.

Ludger Volmer, the Green minister of state in Fischer's ministry for foreign affairs, explained: "Our engagement in Kosovo didn't mean the betrayal of Green principles through government policies, but the translation of Green peace politics in times of war."

Fischer justified the Greens alliance with imperialism with the assertion that "A revolutionary is no pacifist" ... but revolutionaries war against imperialism.

Ironically, in 1999 some German Greens defended the party's militarism as a necessary price to pay for winning a 'commitment' from the SPD to force the closure of nuclear power.

The Greens have also supported military attacks on Iraq since 1998, most recently in February when Fischer refused to condemn US and British bombing raids, instead expressing his government's "understanding" of them. "We do not criticise the action our allies had to take under an immensely difficult situation", Fischer told a news conference after meeting US secretary of state Colin Powell.

Three months after the end of the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosova, the defense spokeswoman of the Green parliamentary group, Angelika Beer, presented a 12-page paper in which she called for German armed forces "that are characterized by great mobility, technical and operational superiority, leadership-adapted discipline and flexible deployment capacity in the context of multinational and international operations."

The Greens also support the militarisation of the European Union, which has so far resulted in the establishment of a military planning staff and a political and security committee, with plans for a 60,000-member ‘rapid reaction force’. Per Gahrton, a Green member of the European Parliament from Sweden asserted in the February 5, 1999 Die Tageszeitung that the green dictum "Think globally, act locally" has become "Think Eurocentrically, act militarily".

Bastardised green concepts are peppered through Beer's paper, titled "Less is More!" She turns green frugality and resourcefulness into support for "higher performance and more cost-efficient armed forces" with which Germany, the European Union and NATO can pursue their imperialist interests. And 'liberation' for Beer means liberating the army from its slumber: "Insufficient structural reforms have led the army into a dead end, from which it must be liberated in order to be prepared for the future."

As for the last of the four green principles, democracy, Fischer told a Greens' conference on May 13, 1999 that "If you pass a resolution calling for a unilateral stop to the bombing [on Serbia and Kosova], without a time limit, I will not carry it out".

The future

Federal elections will take place in Germany next year. The Greens' vote has declined in any number of state and local elections since the 1998 federal election, and it is doubtful whether the party will secure the 5% vote necessary to secure parliamentary representation.

It is debatable whether it would be a set-back for Germans (and others) if the Greens lose their parliamentary representation. The Greens have won some gains - a substantial growth in wind power for example. However, they have actively blocked progressive movements and change on several important fronts, not least German militarism and the nuclear power fiasco.

According to Peter Staudenmaier from the Institute for Social Ecology, "The formerly activist-driven "anti-party party" has shriveled to a coterie of thoroughly professionalized career politicians without any ties whatsoever to grassroots movements." (<http://www.greens.org/s-r/14/14-12.html>)

Reports of the death of the German Greens may be premature, but the end is in sight. Progressives have been leaving for more fertile pastures for years. In July 1999 a significant section of the Young Greens publicly urged a purge of the remaining progressives:  "We think it is time to clean out the attic, to keep what's valuable and get rid of the rubbish. ... The time of peace and compromises is over - what is needed is a clear decision over the correct orientation of the party in the future. We stand for a clear, power-conscious, pragmatic position, but also for a partial replacement of the party's membership."

Moreover, as the party's situation becomes increasingly bleak, its leaders become all the more determined to portray an image of a mature, reponsible political party by systematically ditching every progressive principle and policy the party ever held. Therein lies the dilemma, because all or nearly all the Greens' progressive principles and policies have already been ditched.

Peter Schwarz argued in a January 18, 2001 paper posted on the world socialist website (http://www.wsws.org) that “the Greens have politically exhausted themselves; they have done their duty. With each successive task they have carried out since entering government, abandoning their previous aims - whether concerning combat missions, the exit from the atomic power programme, or in social policy - they also lost their ability to defuse and integrate the potential for protest. While they succeeded in doing this to a large extent with the 50-year-olds from the 1968 generation, among the younger generation they have hardly any influence and support. If this generation comes into conflict with the existing order it will orient itself differently. There are, therefore, fewer reasons to keep the Greens in the government."

Greens' leaders trumpet their ability to bring 'stability' to German politics - a euphemism for co-opting protest movements. But as the March 26-29 waste shipment demonstrates, their capacity to fulfill this task is waning, just as the authorities' "conflict managers" failed to deter anti-nuclear campaigners during the Castor trip.

The “red-green” German coalition government has delivered on its promise to force the closure of the country’s 19 nuclear power reactors. Or has it?

The agreement - finalised between the Social Democratic Party / Greens government and nuclear power utilities on June 14 - was hailed as a “great victory” by Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown. However, on closer inspection, the deal appears to be the latest step of the German Greens into the welcoming arms of neoliberalism.

Previously, the Greens had called for a “clearly defined schedule for the end of atomic power”. However, the June 14 agreement does not specify the timeline of the phase-out; instead, it puts a cap on the lifetime output by all 19 operating reactors, equivalent to an average reactor lifetime of 32 years.

According to a June 16 Reuters report, “the sandal-wearing ecologist activists of yesteryear - now the Greens coalition partner in government - will be in slippers by the time the last German nuclear power plant is shut down.”

No new reactors will be built under the agreement, but the head of a nuclear power utility acknowledged that building new reactors was “no longer economically viable now anyway”.

A Greens demand for the closure of the two oldest reactors before the 2002 national election was dropped during negotiations. The government also agreed not to change safety standards for nuclear power plants. A Greens proposal for a new input tax on nuclear fuel was also dropped by Social Democrat and Greens’ leaders.

The June 14 deal also allows for a continuation of spent fuel shipments to France and the UK for reprocessing until July 1, 2005. After that date, disposal of spent fuel will be restricted to direct transport to a final storage site. Efforts to establish an interim storage site provoked demonstrations involving many thousands of protesters - and thousands of police - in the mid-1990s.

Greens leaders, including foreign minister Joschka Fischer and environment minister Jurgen Trittin, argued that the nuclear deal was the best that could be achieved. Calls by some Greens to renegotiate the deal were “ridiculous”, Fischer said, and quibbling about details was “small-minded.”

A June 25 Reuters report says the deal was the last straw for some left-wingers in the Greens. Antje Radcke, a leader of the left-wing faction in the German Greens, said she would sooner quit the coalition with the Social Democrats than accept the nuclear deal.

Even before the capitulation to numerous nuclear industry demands during the June 14 negotiations, German conservation group Nabu described the government’s plans for a gradual nuclear phase-out as “soft as a baby's nappy”, while Friends of the Earth Germany called it “completely irresponsible”.

The nuclear deal appears not to have provoked widespread, organised opposition from within the Greens. At a national conference of the German Greens on June 23, delegates voted 433--227 to accept the deal.

‘New Greens’

A group of Green parliamentarians and other prominent party post-holders, who call themselves the ‘New Greens’, aim to position the Greens as a liberal, low-tax party of the ‘New Centre’ - the equivalent of Britain’s New Labour. Their environmental platform includes active co-operation with industry, voluntary environmental codes for industry, and focusing environmental policy on the development of sustainable high-tech industries.

Naturschutzbund, a non-government organisation, noted in July 1999, “Environmental policy within the Greens now has the same status as in the other parties. It is a specialist policy field dealt with by experts.”

Last year a large section of the Young Greens issued a statement arguing that the German Greens’ lurch to the right was neither fast nor far-reaching enough. Their statement, supported by a number of parliamentarians, said, “We stand for a clear, power-conscious, pragmatic position, but also for a partial replacement of the party‘s membership. ... Put an end to the tales of 1968: we understand very well that the founders have difficulties with the change from a movement to a party. ... Yes, you were for another system. Yes, you undertook the valiant but unsuccessful struggle against capital. Yes, for you the employers were part of the Evil Empire. That was false at the time, is still false today.

“Those of us from the second generation, at least, aren't interested in how you made your peace with the market economy. The point is that you have. For us, any questioning of the system arose only for a short period, then it became clear, we are for the system, although we recognise its faults and want to put them right.”

Collaboration

There’s plenty of new ground to explore in this collaboration between right-wing environmentalism and neo-liberalism. The emphasis on technology to solve environmental problems dove-tails with corporate calls for tax “reform”; it is argued that financially weak companies cannot make the necessary investments in technologies to protect the environment.

Big business has been largely exempted from so-called eco-taxes in Germany, which mainly affect domestic electricity consumption, punishing people living in poorly insulated homes.

The Green/neoliberal collaboration is as farcical as it is alarming. A leader of the German Greens argued that Germans should be allowed to fly to their vacation destinations only once every five years, in order to reduce the use of jet fuel. Welcoming this suggestion, Martin Hufner, chief economist at Germany’s second largest bank, said, “From the standpoint of global competitiveness, Germans certainly do spend too much time on vacation.”

The German government faced turmoil last night as enraged Greens threatened to fight its historic agreement to phase out nuclear power.

The euphoria of the "breakthrough" in the early hours after arduous negotiations with the nuclear lobby evaporated yesterday, revealing what many Greens considered a fatal flaw: No time limit has been set for the closure of Germany's 19 nuclear plants, and probably not one will be decommissioned in the lifetime of this "Red-Green" administration.

Billed as a "sensible compromise" by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, less biased observers saw only a cave-in. Shares of the operating companies soared by 4 to 5 per cent immediately upon news of their alleged defeat.

"This is unacceptable," said Antje Radcke, one of the Green party's two co-chairmen. "It looks as though the Greens have settled for long-term peace with nuclear power." Ominously, Ms Radcke vowed to vote against the deal at the party conference that is due to decide on the issue in less than two weeks. A rejection by party members would plunge not only the Greens, but also the coalition into crisis. Without his Green allies, Mr Schröder's government has no parliamentary majority.

Meanwhile the impact of a decision has been undermined by opposition pledges that they will reverse it as soon as they come to power. Roland Koch, one of the Christian Democrats' most powerful regional leaders, said: "It's nonsense to speak about a consensus between government and industry. As soon as the CDU and the Free Democrats win the next election, the consensus will vanish."

The agreement between the government and industry calls for the decommissioning of all nuclear power plants after the 32nd year of their existence. That does appear to be a reasonable compromise, given the government had sought a life-span of 30 years, and the companies were holding out for 35. In theory, the agreement would see the last off them switched off around the year 2021.

But the utilities won an important concession, which will allow them to keep the plants going longer. The crucial figure in the accord is the power output that the industry is contracted to deliver. By shuffling their generating capacity and switching off smaller units, the nuclear industry's lifespan can be stretched beyond 2021.

This is a bitter blow to the Greens, especially to their Environment Minister, Jürgen Trittin. As their electoral appeal wanes, the party was desperate for a demonstration of its effectiveness in government.

Mr Trittin, who only a few months ago, proclaimed the "end of the plutonium industry", is having to eat his words.

Reprocessing of spent fuel into plutonium will continue until the end of 2005, it has been agreed. This is a victory of sorts for British Nuclear Fuels at Sellafield, which has a £1bn contract with Germany expiring at the end of 2004. A second contract, though, giving the Germans an option of more reprocessing until 2014, will not be honoured. BNFL put a brave face on it yesterday, pointing out that Germany was only its second most important client after Japan.

But with Japan and the British nuclear industry also having second thoughts, the sun is clearly setting on this side of Sellafield's business.

Splits have widened in the German Greens since NATO's bombing of Serbia ended.

The Greens became the minor partner in a coalition government with the Social Democrats in October 1998. In February 1999, Martin Hufner, chief economist with Germany's second largest bank, said the Greens were “emerging as the voice of economic reason in a number of areas ... In fact, the Greens and their pragmatic leader, foreign minister Joschka Fischer, are quite fiscally conservative, more so in many ways than the Social Democrats.”

Hufner said the Greens are applying the concept of sustainability to economic and social policy. He cited the opposition of the Greens to pension increases, justified with references to “generational equity” -- one of the buzz words of ecologically sustainable development. The Greens argue that it would be unwise to add to the financial burden of future generations by increasing pensions now.  Green opportunism and neo-liberalism have come together. Increased taxes on fuel and power, introduced on April 1, have been sold as “eco-taxes” but are having a disproportionate impact on pensioners and others on low incomes.

The official unemployment rate in Germany is over 10% (with the real level much higher). New taxes on part-time workers have encouraged tens of thousands to give notice; up to 1 million jobs could disappear because of the new taxes, according to a report in the May 8 Economist.

Budget measures passed by the coalition government in parliament on June 23 involve massive cuts in state spending (US$16 billion cut from next year's budget alone), reduced payments to pensioners and the unemployed, and a windfall for business with the standard corporate tax rate to be cut from 40% to 25%.

The support of Greens' leaders for German involvement in NATO's war on Serbia created enormous friction within the party. Fischer justified his warmongering by saying: “A revolutionary is no pacifist”. True, but he failed to note that revolutionaries wage war against imperialism.

The most extreme left- and right-wing positions on the Balkans war were quickly excluded at the Greens' national delegates conference on May 13. Delegates voted in favour of the motion presented by the national executive, which called for a temporary, limited halt to the bombing in order to give Serbian troops the opportunity to leave Kosova. During the conference, Fischer declared: “If you pass a resolution calling for a unilateral stop to the bombing, without a time limit, I will not carry it out”.

The national executive's motion was designed to be so weak as to have no consequences for the Greens' parliamentary leaders, let alone the government. A more progressive motion, calling for a permanent, unilateral cease-fire by NATO, was defeated by 444 votes to 318.

Grown up

The Greens have “grown up” according to the establishment media, their complicity in the Balkans war representing their “matriculation”. The division within the Greens is being portrayed as a generational war between “yuppies” and “hippies”, or the “Realos” (realists) versus the “left”.

The fissures are more complex. More progressive currents within the Greens have also been tempted to fall into line behind the neo-liberal policies of the Social Democrats and the right-wing Green parliamentarians, with some self-described Green “leftists” supporting the Balkans war.

According to David Müller, writing in the July edition of International Viewpoint, “By the end of 1991, the traditional left had been pushed out of the Greens. Those who remained concluded a truce with the party leadership. But the new left ... gradually became a job agency concerned with promoting their own clientele into the increasing number of Green positions in government and the civil service. It did very little to oppose the continuing development of neoliberal positions in the Realo camp. The "Left" accepted the strategic goal of coalition with the Social Democrats and subordinated its own program on every decisive question.”

Apart from opportunistic clientelism, the Greens suffer from a lack of experience, which has been exacerbated by several left splits over the years. Müller says, for example, that in Hanover over 70% of the Greens' members have joined since 1995, and some young party functionaries openly admit that they joined because they see the Greens as the quickest road to a successful career.

Public support

Public support for the Greens has dropped, a problem made all the more pressing with the approach of crucial regional elections. The Greens lost five of their 12 seats in the European Parliament in the June elections. They have slipped to 6% in recent polls, compared to 6.7% in last year's federal election and over 10% in polls in early 1998.

A group of 40 Greens leaders attacked the left wing of the party in an eight-page open letter in late June. They blame the left for creating a “crisis” within the party, for the slump in public support and for jeopardising the Greens' place in the governing coalition.

Nuclear phase-out

Green parliamentarians Oswald Metzger and Christine Scheel recently called for the resignation of Jürgen Trittin, the environment minister and leader of the left-wing Greens. Trittin is accused of harming the party with his positions on issues such as the speedy phasing out of nuclear power.

A phase-out of nuclear power was a key election pledge of both the Greens and the Social Democrats. The formation of a coalition government, and the efforts of Trittin and others to push ahead with the phase-out, provoked a major backlash from the nuclear power utilities, including threats of legal action.

A compromise has been proposed which would involve a gradual phase-out, the last reactor closing in 2023 or 2024. That proposal amounts to little more than a complete capitulation to the nuclear industry. If the leadership of the Greens capitulates on nuclear power, it could be the spark that drives progressives out of the party in droves.

Split

According to Müller, a network of left Greens and others is likely to form outside the party. Various possibilities are currently under discussion. Already a small break has occurred. Eckhard Stratmann, a founding member of the Greens, said in May that he planned to launch a national network for peace activists fed up with the Greens. This “Green Left” network was created on June 6. Some of the Greens' refugees imposed a resolution on this network which explicitly rejected voting for the Greens in the European elections. Müller argues that this resolution needlessly polarised the new network and alienated those still inside the Greens.

A few disenchanted Greens have resigned and joined the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the party which was, in a previous incarnation, the ruling Communist Party in East Germany. However, the origins of the PDS, and its contradictory policies, have proved unattractive to the vast majority of disenchanted Greens.

The PDS is involved in coalition governments with the Social Democrats in two eastern states. However, the Social Democrats are also involved in regional coalitions with the right-wing Christian Democrats, and the possibility that this could occur at the federal level has encouraged Greens to be still more tame in order not to jeopardise the coalition.

In the city-state of Bremen, the Greens won 9% of the vote in elections on June 6, down 4% on the previous election. The Social Democrats, who polled well, had the opportunity to form a local coalition government with the Greens, which would have also given the Social Democrat-Green coalition a majority in the Bundesrat, the federal upper house. However, the Social Democrats chose to continue their “grand coalition” with the Christian Democrats in Bremen.

For their part, the Social Democrats are lurching further to the right, alarmed at the stronger links the Christian Democrats have with big business.

It appears that the right wing of the Greens would like to rid itself of the left, but this is not without risks. The right-wing opportunists are primarily concerned with consolidating their position within the coalition government. However, parties must secure 5% of the vote as a minimum requirement for federal parliamentary representation. No doubt some of right-wing opportunists would rather keep left-wing elements within the party to broaden its voter base.

BERLIN - A 75-year-old anti-nuclear activist who helped found Germany's ecologist Greens 20 years ago said on Thursday she and five other regional officials had quit the party in disgust at its dismal debut in government.

For many Greens, Marianne Fritzen has embodied the party's protesting spirit in her decades-long struggle against nuclear power in the northern region of Wendland, one of the nerve centres of the German nuclear industry. Defending her move, Fritzen said the party's credibility had plummeted because of its failure to implement the swift withdrawal from nuclear power that it promised on entering federal government for the first time in 1998.

"The party has let itself be bullied about too much by industry and the SPD," Fritzen said of the Greens' partner, the centre-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

"It has become impossible to defend Greens policies," she said in a telephone interview from her home in the tiny rural parish of Luechow-Dannenberg, in the shadow of the controversial Gorleben nuclear waste dump.

The walk-out of the six Greens from the parish assembly, which got coverage on national news bulletins on Wednesday evening hours after it happened, stunned party leaders.

"This is a painful loss," said Antje Radcke, one of the national party's two co-leaders, stressing there were no signs as yet of further desertions from the party.

It came as the latest round of negotiations between government and industry officials over the planned phase-out of Germany's 19 nuclear reactors made no progress.

Sources close to the talks, which took place in Berlin on Wednesday, said the two sides were still far away from agreement on the basis of the government's latest offer to spread the closures over a period based on 30 years' reactor life.

Founded in 1980 by pacifist and ecologist activists like Fritzen, the Greens party emerged as a major political force. Riding high with nearly 15 percent in polls two years ago, the Greens' support has fallen to under half that as government setbacks cast the spotlight on the awkward internal debate over their future direction that has been running for years.

Many members abandoned the party last year after it backed NATO's war with Yugoslavia. Thanks to an impassioned plea to the party by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the Greens' most senior politician, the mass exodus many then feared was averted.

The Greens' disarray has allowed Schroeder a softer ride with his government partner than many expected. If the Greens' weakness began endangering the coalition itself, analysts believe the centrist Schroeder would have few qualms in launching a new one with the small liberal Free Democrats.

For the Greens, the crunch is likely to come this summer, when the deadline has been set a negotiated settlement on the withdrawal. If no deal has been reached by then, Schroeder has promised to push ahead with legislation on the move regardless.

Kurt Herzog, a colleague of Fritzen who will join her in running as an independent in next year's parish elections, said he believed the outcome of the nuclear dispute would be critical for the party's survival.

"My fear is that we could have a situation where people start asking whether they need the Greens at all," he said.

(516.5067) BI Lüchow-Dannenberg - If you compare talks with what actually happened one can see that after eight months of the Red-Green government, not much in the direction of a nuclear phaseout, which is essential in Green politics, has happened. The PR campaign was not much more than hot air.

In their coalition agreement the new government formulated their ambitious goal to settle the nuclear phaseout "comprehensive and irreversible by law". Especially, the "100 days program" caused disruption: the subsidies for nuclear power should have been cancelled and the liabilities of the utilities in case of accidents should have been increased. In the center of the public discussion was the Trittins plan of banning reprocessing by law by the year 2000.

The nuclear lobby protested and soon the proposal vanished. The operators of the nuclear power plants feared two things: difficulties with discharge of the nuclear waste and the taxation, respectively the cancellation of the reserved billions for reprocessing. The chancellor protected the demands of the industry and the young energetic Green minister was victimized in front of the ruin of his new law.

Then it became silent around the attempts of implementing new bills into the Atomic Law.

For the problem of final storage a new solution should be found. According to the coalition agreement, the kali-pit in Morsleben, a heritage from former East-Germany, should not be used any longer as a waste storage facility. The search for one single underground waste site for all sorts of nuclear waste should have to start over again. The ore-pit "Schacht Konrad" near Salzgitter is useless as a general storage site, because it is not suitable for waste developing heat. The salt-pit Gorleben which suitability was continiously questioned anyway, would no longer be researched. Earlier this year, during a visit in the Gorleben region Wendland, Trittin announced a moratorium for the Gorleben final disposal plans. A commission for the problem of final storage was set up, which developed criteria for site-specific research. But the planning process for "Schacht Konrad" had not been stopped and in Gorleben salt-pits are still expanded: construction works have not been suspended. In this case too, economics won over - hesitative - politics. And even Trittin did not want to end the construction works without compensation-payments, he still wanted to halt them. Possible financial consequences froze the political engagement.

Left are some show-cases. Shortly before the government changed in Hessen after Easter, Trittin repealed all the directives given by his Christian Democrat predecessor Merkel to prevent a final shut-down of the reactor Biblis A. The Hessian collegue and also Green Party member of Trittin Priska Hinz submittted a 49-pages long directive for the shutdown of Biblis A: but it was just nonsense; this directive had no practical political consequences. Despite all safety deficiencies and after years of struggle with the operator RWE the reactor remained connected to the grid. The reactor was constructed inadequately for earthquakes as well as for leakage and fracturing of pipelines. Biblis A is also the only German nuclear reactor without an external safety warning system. And of course this reactor, like all the other nuclear power plants, has no perspective for the safe disposal of the waste it produces. This fact alone would have been a cause for a shut-down.

Besides, the Biblis A reactor was seen as an alibi for the new Red-Green government. With the immediate closure of the reactor, a quick success, the government would have gained plus points in the public opinion. Many anti-nuclear activists, assumed that by closing Biblis A the government also would have acquired arguments against the critics of the green phaseout bill, which in fact is an aversion of the immediate phaseout. The discussion about directives and shutdown orders concerning Biblis A is an excellent example for the failure of the red-green phaseout-policy. The coalition agreement forsees consensus talks with the electricity utilities in which they have to agree within one year to deadlines for closure of their plants. The Greens retreated with this possible phaseout objective in the Atomic Law in mind. In the end Biblis A was left connected to the power grid.

Shortly before the general elections last year the Greens argued more logically: the nuclear phaseout needs to have a legal basis and has to be constitutionally unquestionable. Thus the Greens, led by the current undersecretary of environment Rainer Baake, started to work out a phaseout-law. The second pillar in the struggle with the nuclear industry was a bureaucratic one, aimed at stronger safety measures. But it was and is clear the debate about nuclear power in and outside the parliament should not be paralyzed by this. A phaseout needs a lobby!

Rainer Baake wrote exactly one year ago: "I imagine it is autumn 2002, the end of the first legislative period of a Red-Green federal government nears. For our own assessment and those of our voters about being a succes or a failure, it will be of enourmous importance if we realize the nuclear phase out. Or if we lost in the political, social and legal disputes." Further he added: "The cancellation of a phaseout law by federal court, lost court cases about compensation-payments concerning billions, or thousands of unemployed workers in the nuclear industry, or a combination of all would be an ernormous blow to the coalition and would seriously endanger its reelection."

Baake favors to subsequently fix deadlines for the operations of reactors and to limit the legal property rights of the owners. This should undermine the expected legal measures by the reactor operators in case of an immediate closure. As a deadline, the Greens thought about 25-year time limit for reactor operation. This also would have resulted in an immediate closure of the old Biblis A reactor. But in any case, no powerplant should be in operation longer than five years after the new law had been implemented. In the justification for a phaseout law, and as explanation for the five year limit, many basic arguments against nuclear power had been included.

Now Germany has a Red-Green government but it is still far away from the phaseout of nuclear power. Biblis A could have been the symbol for the will of the Red-Green government for such phaseout.

The worst notion was the much discussed premise of the phase-out law: the phaseout should happen without any compensation payments. In the phaseout discussion enormous sums were mentioned. It was estimated that an early closure would cost between 70 and 100 billion DM of capital-loss for the utilities. But if the current value of the reactors is taken, calculated by taking in account the depreciation of 18 years, only DM16.6 billion could be charged.

This is still an awfull lot of money, and hardly grudged to an industry which gained billions of subsidies and research money over years by demanding nuclear energy.

By judging the (Red-) Green politics critically and analytically one has to conclude: the first real blow was the coalition agreement itself. Instead of a new comprehensive Atomic Law renewal, merely a quick decision was made: the ban on reprocessing nuclear waste. The important theme, the nuclear phaseout, which should mean limiting life-time operations, was said to be discussed "in consensus" with the nuclear industry. Neither the one nor the other was realized. Instead of a legal ban on reprocessing there was a discussion about capital reserves for nuclear waste diposal. As a consequence, the prohibition of reprocessing, was soon out of the question. DM74 billion are in the funds of the utilities, tax free, but with the liberty to buy shares in the telecommunication market and to take over local public services. Nearly DM30 billion were reserved for the unnecessary reprocessing.

The nuclear industry has the additional problem that because the waste-transports to the reprocessing plants are still banned, the disposal problem is made visible by every transport to Ahaus or Gorleben. But there is no safe "back-end" concept, just the illusion of such a thing. And the fiction of a disposal solution is sabotaged by antinuclear activists by every Tag X (Day X, the day of waste transports) with their actions. The loss of acceptance in the nineties has a name: Castor. That is the trump of the non-parlimentary protest. Antinuclear activists in the Wendland, Ahaus and elsewhere are pretty aware of this fact. They are ready for the next Castor-round and have an additional demand: if the PKA (a pilot plant for the conditioning of spent fuel) will be put into operation, or if it proceeds with nuclear transports into the Wend land, the EXPO 2000 exhibition in Hannover will be used as a forum to demand attention for their interest.

The Red-Green government may think it will be possible to moderate this conflict, as it succeeded with the German participation in the offensive NATO war in Jugoslavia. They will be proven wrong. The discussion about nuclear energy has no split morals. Politicians will be judged for their acts, not for their justifications or telephone-sessions. So, this anti-democratic consensus-skirmish, which ignores the will of the majority, has to end at once. A renewal of the Atomic Law is superfluous, the phaseout has to start immediately with Biblis A!

Source and Contact: Wolfgang Ehmke, BI (Citizen's Initiative)
Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg,
Drawehnerstr. 3, 29439 Lüchow, Germany.
Tel: +49-5841-4684;
Fax: +49-5841-3197