Politicians call for tougher action against climate activists

A debate over the handling of climate protesters is growing more intense in Germany, as some politicians called for tougher consequences.

This comes after a demonstration that disrupted air traffic at Berlin’s main airport.

“These are not climate activists, these are criminal offenders,” the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU), Friedrich Merz, said at a Berlin party conference on Saturday.

After gaining access to the runways, activists of the Last Generation group blocked flights at the BER airport for nearly two hours on Thursday by glueing themselves to the tarmac and cycling around.

“This no longer has anything to do with the right to demonstrate or freedom of expression. This is sheer vandalism,” Merz added.

He recalled that the CDU/CSU parliamentary group had proposed tougher penalties for such actions in parliament, “including the threat of prison sentences for the second offence at the latest.”

The leader of the hard-left Die Linke, Martin Schirdewan, called however for the concerns of climate activists to be taken seriously.

We need to talk about “the real problem,” he told Deutschlandfunk radio on Saturday. “That is, that we as a society are marching towards climate catastrophe.”

The activists resorted to “drastic means,” some of which annoyed him, he said. The crucial thing, he said, was that no one was harmed.

There was no need to tighten criminal laws, he said.

The state premier of Brandenburg, where the airport is located just to the south of Berlin, called on Saturday for the state to act.

“We must not trivialize such incidents,” state premier Dietmar Woidke told the Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung (MAZ).

“The constitutional state must and will act,” he said, without providing any more details.

The group’s most recent action at the BER airport crossed a line, he said. The activists are deliberately endangering people and structures in order to attract attention, he added.

According to the MAZ, senior party figures from the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Greens – which are part of Woidke’s governing coalition – are also distancing themselves from the group.

The state parliamentary group leader of the CDU, Jan Redmann, reportedly sees Last Generation as increasingly on the way to becoming a criminal organization.

According to the report, Alexandra Pichl, the head of the Green Party in the state, is also distancing herself from the protest group.

The Brandenburg State Criminal Police Office is investigating six activists for, among other things, dangerous interference with air traffic, disturbing public operations, trespassing and damage to property.

The action at BER followed several weeks of climate protests organized by the Last Generation movement, including street blockades in the German capital and the targeting of artworks across Europe.

Meanwhile, 19 climate activists who were part of actions that involved glueing themselves to the streets in Munich were released from police custody on Saturday.

“Further offences by those in custody are not to be expected, at least not at present,”