BERLIN (Dispatches) -
Germany wants to use its presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) to support the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen efforts to improve climate protection, Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Saturday.
“Germany has taken over the G7 presidency for 2022 - the G7 countries stand for freedom, democracy and progress,” Lindner said in a tweet. “With this in mind, we must overcome the pandemic and drive the global economic recovery,” he added.
Lindner, party leader of the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), junior partner in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-way ruling coalition, said he wanted to put questions of digitization and climate neutrality on top of the agenda of finance ministers and central bank governors during their G7 meetings.
Meanwhile, Germany has pulled the plug on three of its last six nuclear power stations as it moves towards completing its withdrawal from nuclear power as it turns its focus to renewables.
The government decided to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power following Japan’s Fukushima reactor meltdown in 2011 when an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the coastal plant in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.
The reactors of Brokdorf, Grohnde and Gundremmingen C, run by utilities E.ON and RWE, shut down late on Friday after three and half decades in operation.
The last three nuclear power plants - Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II - will be turned off by the end of 2022.
Preussen Elektra, which runs the Brokdorf and Grohnde plants, said in a statement on Saturday the two had been shut down shortly before midnight on Friday. RWE said the Gundremmingen C plant also stopped generation on Friday evening.