28 Europe The Economist June 4th 2022
M
otorists heading from Paris to
the Mediterranean on the autoroute
du soleilthis summer may be surprised
by the proliferation of bridge-building
over France’s main north-south artery.
The intended beneficiaries are more
unexpected still: hedgehogs, badgers,
wild boar, weasels, deer and other furry,
spiky or slimy things. Between 2021 and
2023, 19 new écoponts, or wildlife bridges,
will be built over the a6 and other motor-
ways operated by aprr, a private firm, at
a total cost of over €80m ($86m). This
will bring its network of green bridges in
France to 119.
Designed to reduce roadkill and help
animals roam more freely, wildlife bridg-
es have become popular from Canada toAustralia. In France they have a long
history. aprr built its first, near Fon-
tainebleau, in 1960. Early versions were
rudimentary. Today’s models, such as the
one under construction to connect for-
ests near Chagny, in Burgundy, are de-
luxe: 25 metres wide, complete with a
pond for frogs and other amphibians,
opaque wooden-fenced sides to shield
the passing critters from the glare of
headlights, and carefully laid piles of
rocks and branches and landscaped
vegetation. Pedestrians are banned.
Every year an estimated 29m mam-
mals are killed on roads in Europe. It is
hard to say how many are saved by éco-
ponts. A study for Vinci, another French
motorway operator, found that between
2011 and 2015 each of its green bridges
was used each year on average by 1,086
red deer, 150 wild boar, 104 roe deer, 48
foxes, eight badgers, four weasels, one
hedgehog and one wolf. Smaller mam-
mals and reptiles preferred underpasses:
on average 189 badgers (as well as 37
weasels, 37 genets and five fire salaman-
ders, among others) crossed via each of
its motorway tunnels.
Private motorway operators are mak-
ing these hefty investments in order to
green their reputations and keep their
state-awarded operating concessions.
Governments too have been building
eco-bridges. Sweden is putting up “reno-
ducts” to help migrating reindeer. Ger-
many has built more than 80 wildlife
crossings, which have helped to protect
the grey wolf. Green campaigners ap-
prove, but add that fewer cars on the
roads would be better still.Wildlife crossingsFor hedgehogs, not road hogs
CHAGNY
France is building overpasses to reduce roadkillKeeping the wolf from the voitureout for a lack of leadership and courage be-
cause he has two big problems, according
to Wolfgang Ischinger, a former chairman
of the Munich Security Conference. One is
the poor communication. The other is that
many members of Mr Scholz’s Social
Democratic Party (spd) do not support the
huge rearmament that is central to the new
foreign and security policy he outlined in
what has been dubbed his Zeitenwende
(“historic turning point”) speech, made
three days after Russia’s invasion began on
February 24th. As a result, his party is
slowing down the implementation of the
new policies. It is perhaps for fear of alien-
ating its members even further that Mr
Scholz has been so reluctant to say clearly
that Germany is now supplying light and
heavy weapons to Ukraine because it wants
Ukraine to win the war.
In a big debate in the Bundestag on June
1st the chancellor recited a long list of the
weapons that Germany has already sent to
Ukraine. It includes some 2,500 anti-air-
craft missiles, such as Stingers, thousands
of anti-tank weapons (many of which,
however, turned out not to work), over 15m
rounds of ammunition, 54 m113 light ar-
moured vehicles (with Denmark), mach-
ineguns, a field hospital, lorry-loads of ex-
plosives, communications equipment, an-
ti-drone guns, night-vision goggles, medi-
cal equipment, tents and fuel. He also
confirmed that the German government
has now promised to supply Ukraine with
the iris-t slmmedium-range surface-to-
air defence system, one of the most mod-
ern of its type available, and one that is ca-
pable of protecting a city as large as Kyiv.
Germany is also supplying 30 Gepard anti-
aircraft tanks, plus ammunition for them,
though these will only arrive in Ukraine in
July. And it is providing seven self-pro-
pelled state-of-the-art howitzers (the Pan-
zerhaubitze 2000). Ukrainians are current-
ly being trained to use them.
Germany is also helping central Euro-
pean countries to provide Soviet-built
equipment to Ukraine by replacing what
they send with newer and better Western
kit. (The advantage of this is that Ukrainian
soldiers are already familiar with Soviet-
built tanks.) The Czech Republic will pro-
vide 20 t-72 tanks to Ukraine and Germany
will give the Czechs 14 Leopard 2 tanks and
an armoured earthmover to help fill the
gap. Germany is doing something similar
with the Greeks. Yet it is not backfilling
enough, says Andrzej Duda, the Polish
president. Mr Duda has accused the Ger-
man government of not honouring a pro-
mise to make up for the 200-plus Soviet-
made tanks it has sent to Ukraine with
modern German ones. Steffen Hebestreit, a
spokesman for the German government,
denies this. He said he was “flabbergasted”
by the accusation as Germany had never
made such a promise.All this causes problems. “For 70 years
Germany was educated to be a pacifist
country,” says Alexander Graf Lambsdorff,
a leading politician of the pro-market Free
Democratic Party (fdp). This means that
Germany’s armed forces are small and
woefully ill-equipped, and also that many
of the country’s leading politicians are
steeped in that pacifist culture. Rolf Müt-
zenich, the leader of the Social Democrats’
parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the
lower house of parliament, fought for dis-
armament for two decades. He wrote his
doctorate on nuclear-weapon-free zones.
By his own admission it “gnaws” at him to
have to vote for his country’s rearmament.
Late on May 29th German political leaders,
some with gritted teeth, finally approved
the central piece of Mr Scholz’s new securi-ty policy, a supplementary €100bn ($107bn)
defence fund. It is likely to be approved by
parliament by the end of this week.
Despite all this, damage has been done,
in particular in central and eastern Europe
where many observers are furious. “The
impression here is that we can rely only on
Britain, America and our own region,” says
Radek Sikorski, a former Polish foreign
minister and a current mep. They helped
Ukraine early, even before the war started,
whereas in his view Germany has done too
little too late. Poland is doing more for Uk-
raine than most, if not all, eu countries.
Yet, given its history and pacifist political
culture, Germany is helping Ukraine mili-
tarily more than many expected. If only it
were better at saying so, and moving rather
more quickly.