Admin l Monday, January 30, 2023
NORTH RHINE WESTPHALIA – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made a plea for Germany’s forceful transition to renewable energies – for the sake of the climate and to curb Moscow’s revenues.
“There can be no return to dependence on Russian fossil fuels under any circumstances,” von der Leyen said Saturday at an event for Germany’s centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU).
“This is a generational task that we must master.”
Von der Leyen, who is a CDU member, spoke at a state party gathering in North Rhine Westphalia, an industrial powerhouse home to Cologne, Dusseldorf and Dortmund.
The western German state has all the prerequisites to emerge stronger from this transformation to clean technologies, she said.
But the fight against climate change must not be tackled at the expense of the economy, she said.
Von der Leyen said Russian President Vladimir Putin “thought that he could blackmail us with our dependence on oil, coal and gas from Russia,” but that Germany had quickly found other sources.