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Three coal-mining federal states in east Germany are opposed to co-financing the government's planned billion-euro projects to phase out coal, according to an open letter sent to Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday.
 
In their letter, the three east German heads of government called for the creation of a special fund to ensure that "financial aid necessary for structural development could be removed from annual debates on the federal budget and become permanent".
 
It was "unacceptable" for the budget funds of the affected German federal states to be planned to their disadvantage, noted the letter signed by the prime ministers Reiner Haseloff of Saxony-Anhalt, Dietmar Woidke of Brandenburg and Michael Kretschmer of Saxony.
 
"Under no circumstances should the impression be created that the coal-mining districts will be left behind as bearers of the main burden," especially as the decision to phase out coal had been taken by the federal government, read the open letter to Merkel.
 
The letter noted, however, that the German government had nonetheless repeatedly referred to options to phase out coal that would entail financial participation by Germany's federal states.
 
At the beginning of the year, a commission set up by the German government recommended 40 billion euros (44.9 billion U.S. dollars) of federal aid for structural change for the affected coal regions. The commission called on the government to present an outline for a law by the end of April.
 
By 2038, Germany wants to phase out electricity generation from climate-damaging lignite. Germany's open-cast mining areas are located in North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg.