2024-09-21 19:09:18
After Intel rejection
“Habeck is contradicting himself”
Updated on 17.09.2024Reading time: 4 min.
The traffic light government is facing a new dispute over money. It concerns almost ten billion euros that the chip manufacturer Intel was supposed to receive in subsidies.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) has described the postponed start of construction of the Intel factory in Magdeburg as a purely business decision. This has to do with corporate policy and “financial needs,” said Habeck on the sidelines of a start-up summit in Berlin. “We have done our homework.” The EU Commission’s approval under state aid law is imminent.
Nothing changes in the goal of maintaining or expanding semiconductor production in Europe. “The strategy is not aimed at a single company, but at ensuring that we have economic security, that we have a certain level of expertise in this critical industrial sector in Europe and that we are not 100 percent dependent on Southeast Asian markets,” said Habeck.
The federal government wants to support Intel’s settlement with almost 10 billion euros. “How exactly to proceed with the reserved funds is something we will discuss behind the scenes in the government,” said Habeck. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) has already made similar comments. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wrote on the Platform X that all funds not needed for Intel must be reserved in the federal budget to reduce open financial questions.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs, however, said that the Intel funds were not available for the core budget. The Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, Michael Kellner (Greens), is pushing for the billions originally earmarked for Intel to be invested instead of using them to close budget gaps. “The funds released for 2025 should be invested in the future of our country,” Kellner told t-online. “Our country urgently needs investment.”
The funding for Intel is to come from the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) – a special fund through which the federal government supports climate projects, but also the establishment of important technologies. This year, the KTF has earmarked around four billion euros for the Intel settlement. “The money comes from the revenue from CO2 pricing nationally and European,” said Green Party deputy Andreas Audretsch to t-online. “It is logical and sensible that this revenue is also used to finance climate protection and transformation.”
The deputy chairwoman of the SPD parliamentary group, Verena Hubertz, told t-online that she thought it was “conceivable to use some of the funds for the difficult budget negotiations and thus for the future of the country.” Intel’s announcement that it would temporarily halt construction of the factory in Magdeburg was a setback for Germany as a business location. However, it remains to be seen how Intel will act in the long term. The US company has initially postponed construction of the factory in Magdeburg by two years.
The SPD’s deputy budget spokesman, Andreas Schwarz, rejected the demands of Habeck and Lindner: “How we use the ten billion euros should be clarified in dialogue with one another. I expect this from all traffic light partners, including the finance minister and the economics minister.” The budget is “cut to the limit” and the financing of important internal and external security projects, for example, is still open, Schwarz told t-online. “It is therefore unfortunate if members of the government cannot wait 24 hours to assert their own claims.”
The Bundestag has the right to decide on the budget, so the parliament will decide in dialogue with the federal government over the next few months how the money will be used. “Although I very much regret the Intel decision, it also represents an opportunity to relieve the budget in critical areas,” said the Social Democrat.
FDP parliamentary group vice-chairman Christoph Meyer, on the other hand, supports the demand of his party leader Lindner: “Habeck is contradicting himself and the agreement between Olaf Scholz, Christian Lindner and himself on how to deal with the global spending cuts.” The government’s decision is clear: “The global spending cuts must be significantly reduced and the Intel billions that are not needed now must be used for this.”