Chancellor-elect Olaf Scholz (SPD) has defended restrictions on the unvaccinated as a necessary means of breaking the fourth Corona wave. "The infection incidence affecting us all today stems from the unvaccinated," Scholz said Tuesday after the signing of the coalition agreement between the traffic light partners in Berlin. "There is no doubt about that at all." Scholz said, "Many of those are also threatened themselves because the probability that they will become infected is very, very high and therefore it is also very likely that a part of them will fall ill and another part will have to fight for their own lives in intensive care units." It is therefore quite clear that restrictions are necessary for those who have not been vaccinated, he said.

Last week, the federal and state governments agreed that access to stores beyond daily necessities would be restricted to those who had been vaccinated and those who had recovered. Access to cultural and recreational facilities, as well as restaurants, will also be restricted to those who have been vaccinated and recovered, with the exception of children and people who cannot be vaccinated.

"We must do everything we can to protect the health of our citizens, and that will only succeed if very many people get vaccinated," Scholz said. There is already a high vaccination rate, he said, and millions of booster shots are currently being added. Scholz reiterated the goal of 30 million vaccinations by Christmas.

"If then torchlight processions take place in front of the house of a health minister, then it is meant as a threat," Scholz continued. On Friday, there had been a torchlight march by opponents of the state's Corona policy in front of the house of Saxony's Health Minister Petra Köpping (SPD). Scholz announced that the Democrats would resolutely oppose such aggressive action.

Green Party leader Robert Habeck said that the success of the climate protection measures envisaged by the traffic light coalition would not become apparent immediately. The new government would have to start "in a backlog and carry this backlog around for the first year and a half, two years," the designated climate protection and economics minister said. He spoke of a "long-distance run" with regard to the planned structural changes.

There will "certainly be some concrete steps to be taken very quickly," but the effectiveness will "only be able to unfold in the second or third year." The aim is to reform the economic system as a whole in such a way "that growth and climate protection are organically linked," Habeck said. To achieve this, he said, laws would have to be made, regulatory guard rails would have to be adjusted and support programs would have to be aligned.

Christian Lindner (FDP), Germany's finance minister designate, said his department's task over the next four years would be to enable "both the public projects for climate protection and the private transformation tasks to be realized." Particularly in the area of mobility, the traffic light coalition has set itself "extraordinarily ambitious goals," he said.

Lindner cited as examples the "climate-friendly further development of individual mobility by car" as well as increasing the efficiency of rail. If the program planned by the traffic light coalition is realized, "we will be a mobile country in Germany, but also a much more climate-friendly one."