Armin Laschet or Markus Söder? The prime ministers of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria are struggling to find the right way out of the corona crisis - and who will become candidate for chancellor from the CDU and CSU. Now the CSU chief is also stretching a huge rescue package over his free state. A comment by Merkur editor-in-chief Georg Anastasiadis.
- In the fight against the corona virus * immense sums are loosened.
- Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder even unpacks the bazooka.
- The CSU leader still has a lot of work to do regarding the exit restrictions.
Munich - Bavaria is now also unpacking the bazooka: the Free State is making available 60 billion euros, i.e. the revenue of a complete budget year, for participations, guarantees and grants to ward off the consequences of the corona crisis . Add to this the firepower of the 750 billion euro federal rescue package and the 750 billion euro bond purchase program of the European Central Bank.
The United Nations announced that the virus crisis had historical dimensions this week. This also applies to the guns that the state and the central bank have positioned against them in the past two weeks. The policy of "whatever-it-takes" gives hope that the recession that has begun * will not lead to depression , but will be replaced by a new upswing in the second half of the year.
Corona crisis: Söder wants to support all companies - a good thing
The question that many small business owners with little capital are asking themselves is: Who will hold out until then? It was therefore right that Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder abandoned his minister of economics' original request to only provide grants to those entrepreneurs who first used up all of their personal wealth for the business. Those who have to expect to become impoverished first and then be bankrupt by a continuing lockdown * prefer to shut down straight away.
An operational mass extinction would have caused damage to the medium-sized Bavarian economic structure that could not be repaired so quickly. The rescue package now opened by the state government offers the chance that the Free State, which has been particularly affected by the virus due to its high level of international networking, will be able to defend its economic dominance vis-à-vis other countries and expand it once the crisis has been overcome. This shows how important it was that Bavaria maintained its fiscal policy in good times; it can now mobilize tremendous forces during the crisis.
Corona crisis: Söder in terms of restrictions in line with Merkel
Even more important than state bridging aid for the economy is the question of how long the country will remain snap-frozen due to the imposed exit restrictions * . The prime ministers of Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia, Söder and Laschet, who are also struggling to become chancellors in the Union , have given remarkably different answers. Söder, like the Chancellor, believes that any premature loosening debate is negligent because it could lead citizens to act carelessly in dealing with the virus.
Laschet, on the other hand, demands that politicians should already consider an exit strategy , since the radical deprivation of civil liberties should not last a day longer than absolutely necessary. Right, in their own way, both. Loosening too soon endangers life; But holding on too long brings suffering and need for existence and drives people into mental illnesses and, in the worst case, into suicide.
Advice is needed: The two Union chancellor candidates Armin Laschet (left) and Markus Söder must find an exit strategy from the restrictions in the Corona crisis.
© dpa / Guido Kirchner
Corona crisis: exit strategy must be worked out together with virologists
This is why an exit strategy is needed, which political decision-makers now have to develop in close exchange with the virologists. If it is available, a communication strategy is also required to prepare citizens and businesses for what is to come. Otherwise, warns the economist Volker Wieland, the companies will eventually consider whether they would rather go into bankruptcy instead of accumulating more and more loans .
A quarantine was imposed because a large number of infected people among patients and staff members appeared in a Munich clinic.