Heinrich Strößenreuther leaves the party – sharp criticism of Merz

Founder of the Climate Union

Environmental activist Strößenreuther sharply criticizes Merz – and leaves the CDU

27.12.2024Reading time: 2 min.

Heinrich Strößenreuther: He wants to leave the CDU again. (Source: Heinrich Strößenreuther)

Strößenreuther is no stranger to Berlin’s environmental and climate policy. His joining the CDU almost four years ago surprised many. Now he wants to leave the party again.

The Berlin environmental activist Heinrich Strößenreuther has announced that he will hand in his CDU party membership again. “I struggled with myself for a long time. In the last two or three months there were many occasions when I could have left. Now I have said that I still have to make a clear decision this year,” he told the German press -Agency.

Strößenreuther says he wants to rejoin the Greens, of which he was a member until 2015. The environmental activist is considered a pioneer of the mobility transition.

He initiated the bicycle referendum in Berlin, which was the basis for the Berlin Mobility Act passed in June 2018. He is also one of the initiators of the tree referendum in Berlin, which is about better adapting the city to climate change.

“I joined in March 2021 to found the Climate Union and help the CDU with a potential black-green coalition on climate policy,” he continued. “But to the extent that CDU leaders from Friedrich Merz to Jens Spahn to Markus Söder have recently railed against climate policy and the Greens, red lines have been crossed.” This does not correspond to the Christian and democratic decency with which we should treat one another.

“It is the backing of these three top leaders to the right, in terms of rhetoric, the Trumpian attitude when it comes to dealing with facts and a misunderstanding of the economic connections with a view to the global transformation that has long been taking place,” said the industrial engineer, who has worked, among other things, as a campaigner at Greenpeace and in environmental management at Deutsche Bahn.

“The German automobile market will soon be flooded with cheap Chinese battery cars. And in Germany one or two large manufacturers will survive. That could have been done differently, especially as a business party,” criticized Strößenreuther.