Bid to unify German environmental law fails: minister

Germany’s environment minister declared as dead in the water Sunday a mammoth project almost two decades in the making aimed at hacking through the mass of red tape that is German environmental legislation.

“Germany will remain without a simple, transparent, unbureaucratic and all-encompassing environmental rule book,” Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement. “The existing fragmentation will remain in place.”
At present each of Germany’s 16 states has its own set of regulations on issues such as pollution, making the approval process for firms planning new projects like roads or factories highly bureaucratic and complex.

The German branch of Friends of the Earth, BUND, said there was now a danger of a “race to the bottom” among German states to relax environmental regulations in order to attract investment.

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