Impatiently, the Prime Minister sits on the government bench this Thursday. Several times he turns the folder with the manuscript in his hands, smoothing his tie. The AFD faction in the Bavarian state parliament has still requested a current hour on democracy and freedom of expression to cultivate their victim myth. This takes a while.
Even before the next item on the agenda is completely called, Söder starts in the direction of the lectern. It is his point. He holds his fifth government statement. The most important so far.
Söder is presenting a two billion euro investment program for research and technology under the heading "High-tech Agenda Bavaria". He places himself among other things in the tradition of Edmund Stoiber. For the ambitious package, the Free State even refrained from paying off large debts.
The speaker Söder does not save as usual with superlatives.
"This program will make waves in Germany and far beyond," says the CSU chief. He wanted to ignite a "research turbo". "We do not spill, we dunk."
Bavaria and Germany are still among the world leaders. However: "I'm afraid that Germany is just oversleeping a development." Söder postulates confidently: "The Bavarian way is the pioneer way of the future."
Söder has been head of government for one and a half years now. After two legislative periods, the current office should be over, so he himself has promised him. In a possible re-election Söder would then in 2028 through. Meanwhile, it is becoming clearer how Söder wants to contest these years: as a modernizer and reformer of Bavaria - and his party.
In Berlin, Söder has long been traded for other offices: Because the CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is weakening, could be for the CSU leader, the question of the Chancellor candidate in the not too distant future in acute. Would he want? Söder always rejects such speculation. And emphasizes that his place is in Bavaria. By the way, Edmund Stoiber had said quite similarly. Before he took over the Chancellor candidate for the year 2002.
In the spring of 2018, Söder's first government statement still included a mish-mash of 100 individual measures, from additional rider teams for the "Bavarian cavalry" to the space program "Bavaria One", but now he is more focused. His main topics are the environment and sustainability.
Tough to grasp for his opponents
They promise a more successful profile than debates about asylum policy. The green opposition leader Ludwig Hartmann remains in the state parliament debate about the high-tech agenda little more than demand a primacy of climate protection and insist on the implementation of cloudy announcements.
For his opponents, Söder is harder to grasp than in 2018. Since then, he has taken over the content of the "Save the Bees" folk campaign for better species protection. The end of the political summer break he made with a visit to the Zugspitze, where he stood in front of the melting Schneefernergletscher.
Now a technology program: Bayern wants to become a leader in robotics and artificial intelligence, it will in future develop battery cells for electric cars and train many additional computer scientists. Similar initiatives have already been launched by other states, but Söder would not be Söder if that would bother him. "We do not start sometime, but immediately," he says.
The Bavarian package alone includes 100 new chairs for Artificial Intelligence, 1000 new professorships throughout Bavaria and a 600 million euro rehabilitation program for the universities. New research centers and faculties are being created at several locations in the state. With particularly well-endowed research and excellence professors Söder wants to attract top researchers from all over the world.
Laptop and leather pants part 2
Söder promises the "since Franz Josef Strauss largest promotion of aerospace in Bavaria" and reminds next to the CSU super father of the merits of other "wise, wise men", King Maximilian II and Edmund Stoiber: "You have in their time Bavaria brought forward by courageous reforms. " Laptop and leather pants Part 2, so to speak. Although the catchphrase is not from Stoiber, but from Roman Herzog, it is mostly associated with the era of Stoiber.
However, Söder's agenda differs in one important point from Stoiber: Söder does not save. The goal of reducing all debts by 2030, he has cashed. Instead, he wants to reduce the eradication of old debt almost completely: instead of 750 million euros, Bavaria will pay only 50 million in 2019, as well as 2020 and 2021, when even a billion amortization were provided.
"Given negative interest rates and a huge investment backlog, it's more important to invest than to pay off prematurely," says Söder. And: "Investments are the best remedy for a cooling economy." He also takes position in the internal Union dispute over the right line in fiscal policy.
The Supreme Audit Office of Bavaria already complained that Söder moves away from the austerity. Even in his party, the Keynesian impulse does not appeal to everyone.
But Söder can afford that now.