Germany’s Green Party is currently being rocked by a cronyism scandal, after it was revealed that several key figures in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action were not only ideological allies but also close relatives. These revelations forced economy minister Robert Habeck—a member of the Greens—to sack his closest aide and ally, Patrick Graichen, the former state secretary responsible for pushing through radical and costly green energy policies.
First, it emerged that Patrick Graichen was instrumental in selecting a friend as the head of Germany’s Energy Agency, without disclosing that his preferred candidate was previously the best man at his wedding. In another instance, it was revealed that a ministry official happened to be married to Graichen’s sister, Verena, who works at the Öko-Institut in Freiburg, where another of the Graichen siblings is also employed. Such nepotism led the media to dub them the ‘Graichen Clan.’
Habeck’s belated reaction to this scandal further damaged his party. After the revelations regarding Graichen’s best man, Habeck called this “a mistake” and resisted firing Graichen. Instead, he lamented about a political campaign of the opposition and the “fossil lobby,” saying he refused to “sacrifice humans” for them. However, after it surfaced that Graichen had approved a €600,000 public subsidy for an environmental NGO where, incidentally, his sister Verena sat on the board, Habeck could no longer brush the issue aside. “This was one mistake too many,” he said, regretfully dismissing his top ally from the ministry’s leadership. However, he added that Graichen was the victim of a hate campaign allegedly being fueled by “right-wing extremists and Putin trolls” online. Some critics spoke of a ‘green mafia’ that has captured Graichen’s former ministry.
This scandal has significantly scarred the Green Party, which has fallen back to 15% in the polls. The party is now in fourth place, having fallen behind the right-wing AfD, which is riding high due to widespread dissatisfaction with high energy prices and mounting immigration pressure. In the regional election in the northern city-state of Bremen earlier this month, the Greens lost almost six points. It appears a significant part of the electorate seems to have woken up to the reality of extreme ideological decarbonization schemes that the Greens are trying to impose, which endangers Germany’s industrial base.
Many German homeowners are alarmed at the prospect of a ban on new oil and gas heating systems that will most likely come into force next year. This radical plan pursued by Habeck was Graichen’s brainchild, first devised when he was still president of the Agora Energiewende (Energy Transition) think tank. Replacing old gas boilers with heat pumps will cost homeowners tens of thousands of euros, and many families fear the financial burden will be unaffordable.
Nevertheless, nowhere in Europe has the green movement become as dominant in agenda setting and media influence as in Germany. Since 2021, the Green Party has been part of the federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and they are determined to push through their vision of an all-encompassing ‘green transition,’ incorporating all aspects of energy and industrial policy, but also society at large. Germany, long seen as the industrial powerhouse of Europe, is now becoming the laboratory testing ground for one of the planet’s most extreme energy policies, which the Wall Street Journal once aptly called “the world’s most stupid energy policy.”
Following the paranoid, decades-long campaign by the green movement against nuclear power, which peaked in 2011 following the Fukushima accident in Japan, the government of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel hastily abandoned nuclear energy in Germany. In April, Scholz’s coalition government decommissioned the last three operational nuclear power plants, which supplied electricity to millions of homes, even amid an ongoing energy price crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This shows the extent of ideological stubbornness which drives the Greens.
Ironically, Germany’s energy mix has now become more carbon-intensive than before, as coal power plants replaced the shuttered nuclear plants. Still, the purist German Green ideologues did not fret over this. Coal is scheduled to be phased out in the coming years, according to plans approved by Merkel’s government, and the timeline for implementation may now be accelerated. Germany will then be entirely reliant on volatile solar and wind power, even though it lacks the storage capacity to maintain a stable supply during times of low sunlight and poor wind conditions. The risk of severe national blackouts has increased, with potentially catastrophic and deadly consequences.
However, the country’s green ‘great transformation’ does not stop here. Germany’s Greens are equally—if not more—concerned with transforming society according to the tenets of ‘woke’ and gender ideology. Traditional families are to be replaced with ‘rainbow families,’ while LGBT indoctrination in schools is a pet project of theirs. For years, an intense ideological sleaze has overtaken many media outlets—especially the public broadcasters, who are strongly influenced by the Greens. These outlets now unabashedly push for adopting gender language with hiccup-like gender gaps in many nouns, despite surveys indicating two-thirds of the population do not want to be force-fed this artificial newspeak jargon. The open borders immigration policy favoured by the Greens and their illusions about a multicultural society have resulted in dire consequences. These are evident in many cities, most prominently Berlin, which is plagued by high crime, social instability, and failing schools where a large percentage of students cannot adequately speak German.
The demographic stronghold of the Greens is the urban, academic middle and upper middle class, and the cultural and media institutions. Although their electoral share does not exceed the 15% range, they have managed to attain a kind of hegemonic position in many public debates, especially surrounding climate policy, where the German public displays levels of alarmism not seen in many other countries and where climate apostle St. Greta attracted larger crowds than anywhere else. The recent nepotism scandal in the economics ministry might dent the Greens’ share in polls for a while, but the structural problem of their dominance remains. It is indeed a problem for all of Europe when its largest country and economy is held captive by a highly irrational, ‘woke’ ideological movement.
Green Sleaze in Germany
Germany’s Green Party is currently being rocked by a cronyism scandal, after it was revealed that several key figures in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action were not only ideological allies but also close relatives. These revelations forced economy minister Robert Habeck—a member of the Greens—to sack his closest aide and ally, Patrick Graichen, the former state secretary responsible for pushing through radical and costly green energy policies.
First, it emerged that Patrick Graichen was instrumental in selecting a friend as the head of Germany’s Energy Agency, without disclosing that his preferred candidate was previously the best man at his wedding. In another instance, it was revealed that a ministry official happened to be married to Graichen’s sister, Verena, who works at the Öko-Institut in Freiburg, where another of the Graichen siblings is also employed. Such nepotism led the media to dub them the ‘Graichen Clan.’
Habeck’s belated reaction to this scandal further damaged his party. After the revelations regarding Graichen’s best man, Habeck called this “a mistake” and resisted firing Graichen. Instead, he lamented about a political campaign of the opposition and the “fossil lobby,” saying he refused to “sacrifice humans” for them. However, after it surfaced that Graichen had approved a €600,000 public subsidy for an environmental NGO where, incidentally, his sister Verena sat on the board, Habeck could no longer brush the issue aside. “This was one mistake too many,” he said, regretfully dismissing his top ally from the ministry’s leadership. However, he added that Graichen was the victim of a hate campaign allegedly being fueled by “right-wing extremists and Putin trolls” online. Some critics spoke of a ‘green mafia’ that has captured Graichen’s former ministry.
This scandal has significantly scarred the Green Party, which has fallen back to 15% in the polls. The party is now in fourth place, having fallen behind the right-wing AfD, which is riding high due to widespread dissatisfaction with high energy prices and mounting immigration pressure. In the regional election in the northern city-state of Bremen earlier this month, the Greens lost almost six points. It appears a significant part of the electorate seems to have woken up to the reality of extreme ideological decarbonization schemes that the Greens are trying to impose, which endangers Germany’s industrial base.
Many German homeowners are alarmed at the prospect of a ban on new oil and gas heating systems that will most likely come into force next year. This radical plan pursued by Habeck was Graichen’s brainchild, first devised when he was still president of the Agora Energiewende (Energy Transition) think tank. Replacing old gas boilers with heat pumps will cost homeowners tens of thousands of euros, and many families fear the financial burden will be unaffordable.
Nevertheless, nowhere in Europe has the green movement become as dominant in agenda setting and media influence as in Germany. Since 2021, the Green Party has been part of the federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and they are determined to push through their vision of an all-encompassing ‘green transition,’ incorporating all aspects of energy and industrial policy, but also society at large. Germany, long seen as the industrial powerhouse of Europe, is now becoming the laboratory testing ground for one of the planet’s most extreme energy policies, which the Wall Street Journal once aptly called “the world’s most stupid energy policy.”
Following the paranoid, decades-long campaign by the green movement against nuclear power, which peaked in 2011 following the Fukushima accident in Japan, the government of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel hastily abandoned nuclear energy in Germany. In April, Scholz’s coalition government decommissioned the last three operational nuclear power plants, which supplied electricity to millions of homes, even amid an ongoing energy price crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This shows the extent of ideological stubbornness which drives the Greens.
Ironically, Germany’s energy mix has now become more carbon-intensive than before, as coal power plants replaced the shuttered nuclear plants. Still, the purist German Green ideologues did not fret over this. Coal is scheduled to be phased out in the coming years, according to plans approved by Merkel’s government, and the timeline for implementation may now be accelerated. Germany will then be entirely reliant on volatile solar and wind power, even though it lacks the storage capacity to maintain a stable supply during times of low sunlight and poor wind conditions. The risk of severe national blackouts has increased, with potentially catastrophic and deadly consequences.
However, the country’s green ‘great transformation’ does not stop here. Germany’s Greens are equally—if not more—concerned with transforming society according to the tenets of ‘woke’ and gender ideology. Traditional families are to be replaced with ‘rainbow families,’ while LGBT indoctrination in schools is a pet project of theirs. For years, an intense ideological sleaze has overtaken many media outlets—especially the public broadcasters, who are strongly influenced by the Greens. These outlets now unabashedly push for adopting gender language with hiccup-like gender gaps in many nouns, despite surveys indicating two-thirds of the population do not want to be force-fed this artificial newspeak jargon. The open borders immigration policy favoured by the Greens and their illusions about a multicultural society have resulted in dire consequences. These are evident in many cities, most prominently Berlin, which is plagued by high crime, social instability, and failing schools where a large percentage of students cannot adequately speak German.
The demographic stronghold of the Greens is the urban, academic middle and upper middle class, and the cultural and media institutions. Although their electoral share does not exceed the 15% range, they have managed to attain a kind of hegemonic position in many public debates, especially surrounding climate policy, where the German public displays levels of alarmism not seen in many other countries and where climate apostle St. Greta attracted larger crowds than anywhere else. The recent nepotism scandal in the economics ministry might dent the Greens’ share in polls for a while, but the structural problem of their dominance remains. It is indeed a problem for all of Europe when its largest country and economy is held captive by a highly irrational, ‘woke’ ideological movement.
READ NEXT
The Enterprise State
Play the Ball, not the Man: Cancel Culture’s Attempt To Capture Hungarian Academia
Starmer’s War on Farmers: a New Low for Client Politics