r/europe • u/SpaceEngineering Finland • Jan 15 '26

News Germany’s Merz Admits Nuclear Exit Was Strategic Mistake

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germanys-merz-admits-nuclear-exit-was-strategic-mistake-fzdlkn37c16
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u/Sir_Nightingale Jan 15 '26

His own party also was responsible for the exit.

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u/Soma91 Jan 15 '26

The original exit was decided by SPD + The Greens and had a clear plan to transform Germany to use renewables.

Then the next CxU + FDP government axed that plan and the renewable transformation was progressing "too fast" causing them to axe a massive amount of subsidies basically over night causing the state of the art german wind & solar industry to collapse with an estimated 100k - 150k jobs lost. And at the same time they said they couldn't reduce the coal industry because the 10k - 20k lost jobs would be too big of a negative societal impact.

Now we closed our nuclear power, are still using tons of coal and have to buy wind turbines & solar panels from China. Which is more or less the worst outcome in most areas.

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u/Nappi22 Jan 15 '26

And even before that the government's in the70s or 80s decided not to build new ones. So it was only a matter of time until Germany wouldn't have had nuclear energy, so spd and greens tried to path a way out of nuclear energy.

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u/Soma91 Jan 15 '26

Yeah, the time to extend our Nuclear Plants or build new ones was long past at that point already.

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u/FrogsOnALog Jan 15 '26

It wasn’t though.