Gesamtmetall President Stefan Wolf has little hope that the economy will do better again under the traffic lights. He criticized one minister in particular sharply in the interview.
Germany’s economy is shrinking – and politicians are trying to counteract it: with a traffic light legislative package for more growth, with an industrial summit at the Chancellor, with new ideas for more subsidies, which were recently presented by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens).
The president of the Gesamtmetall employers’ association, Stefan Wolf, is only partially convinced by this. He calls for a fundamental policy change that gives companies security and ensures better location conditions. Is that still possible with the traffic lights? Or are new elections needed quickly? And what does he expect with a view to the end of the peace period in the ongoing collective bargaining dispute in the metal and electrical industries? In the t-online interview, Wolf gives answers.
t-online: Mr. Wolf, we would like to start with a quote from Heinrich Heine, which we ask you to complete. Everyone knows the sentence: “When I think of Germany at night, …”
Stefan Wolf: …I lost sleep.
Yes, and joking aside: When I think about Germany, I really worry about the future viability of the location. And I fear that if something doesn’t happen quickly, we’ll be heading for even greater deindustrialization.
You sound very pessimistic. Why?
The general conditions in Germany are simply bad. And nothing changes for the better. The government is torn apart, there is nothing going forward and nothing going back. Example of reducing bureaucracy: I have been hearing for almost two years that politicians finally want to deliver, and the Chancellor also just said that the supply chain law has to go. But nothing is happening. This frustrates me enormously. Take social contributions, for example: They are expected to rise to over 42 percent next year – although we have long been calling for them to be capped at 40 percent.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has just initiated a hospital reform that is intended to make the health system more efficient and save costs.
Yes, that is also good and right. But that’s not enough. Overall, the entire social insurance system must become more efficient, with administrative costs alone amounting to 24 billion euros. It needs to be better structured and even more digital. We need a major organizational reform of German social security.
If you complain like that: Would early elections be better for the country?
Basically, I’m an optimist. Our economic foundation is good, we have good basic conditions so that we can return to our old strength. But if there is no liberation towards better framework conditions, I don’t want to rule that out.
If there is no change in policy, early elections would be good for the country. Germany needs a signal of departure: We cannot afford the current standstill, every month counts.
Friedrich Merz has a better understanding of what politics can do for an economic recovery
Stefan Wolf
According to the current state of the polls, the CDU would win the election. Would Friedrich Merz be the better chancellor?
Yes. Friedrich Merz has a better understanding of what politics can do for an economic recovery. At best, after the election he will govern together in a bourgeois coalition with the FDP, which also knows this.
It doesn’t look like that. A grand coalition between the Union and the SPD would be more likely. In the past, such an alliance represented stagnation.
My expectation is that Mr. Merz and the Union will push through the really important points in the coalition agreement even in this second-best case – and that the SPD will send other ministers to the cabinet. To put it bluntly: In my opinion, Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is a real problem figure in the cabinet. He wants more and more social benefits and less and less free market economy. We really can’t use that if we want to become a strong economic nation again.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck is proposing a new “Germany Fund” that would promote investments in companies. A good idea?
The only positive thing about this is the Economics Minister’s realization that the local conditions are obviously so bad that companies are no longer willing to invest in Germany and politicians must act urgently. We need profound structural reforms. Funding these plans requires budget savings and prioritization.