EU Commissioner Thierry Breton will be coming to Berlin and Lusatia (Lausitz) for political talks from May 16-17. On May 16, he will meet with Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). Talks are also planned with the members of the Committee on European Union Affairs in the Bundestag and its Chairman Anton Hofreiter, and with Bundestag Defense Committee Chairwoman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann.
On 17 May, Breton will take part in the event “Economic Transformation, Net-Zero Valley and Digitalization” in Spreetal in Lusatia. Nearby, he will also visit the Schwarze Pumpe Industrial Park on the border between Brandenburg and Saxony, joined by the Minister Presidents of Brandenburg Dietmar Woidke (SPD) and Saxony Michael Kretschmer (CDU). Together, the three want to emphasize establishing Lusatia as the first “Net Zero Valley” in Europe.
The Net Zero Valley involves throwing several billion euros in investments into green-tech and related research projects in the former East German lignite mining region which the EU Commission and the German government want to transform make a center to ostensibly fight emissions. (They could keep their mouths shut: That would help.) Vainly they hopes that their “valley of the clueless” act will create new jobs, as the “net zero valley” program is not expected to cobble up more than up to 10,000 jobs—whereas the lignite mining and related power generation used to employ 80,000 personnel.
