As of: February 5, 2024, 5:30 p.m
By: Georg Anastasiadis
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Georg Anastasiadis, editor-in-chief of Münchner Merkur, comments on the surprising unity of traffic light ministers Christian Lindner (FDP, left) and Robert Habeck (Greens) in the task of relieving companies.
© Michael Kappeler/dpa/Klaus Haag
Relieving the burden on companies is now the common goal of Economics Minister Habeck and Finance Minister Lindner.
The Chancellor has remained silent about it so far, but he should make the whole thing a top priority, comments Georg Anastasiadis.
The traffic light is making progress.
She argues - but at least now about the right topics.
Our companies are no longer internationally competitive.
After 16 years of Merkel's Sleeping Beauty slumber, during which the country rested and competitors courageously reformed, they must be unleashed again if Germany is not to become a relegated country in Europe.
Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner, of all people, the biggest arguments in this coalition on the verge of a nervous breakdown, surprisingly agree on this.
A little traffic light miracle?
Habeck has picked up the phone a lot in the last few weeks and spoken to company bosses on the phone.
Then suddenly there was an alarm.
Scholz should take an example from Schröder, who made saving site D a top priority
Good this way.
Only the “how” is once again the subject of the usual nagging.
Green Habeck is calling for new debts for corporate aid, an abolition of the FDP leader's solidarity, and the SPD, taken by surprise by the debate, is stumbling along with the idea of a sovereign wealth fund for investments.
That won't work.
Olaf Scholz, the great silent leader in the Chancellery, should follow the example of his party colleague Gerhard Schröder.
He made saving the D 2000 location a top priority and, with his red-green coalition, implemented the largest tax cut in generations for citizens and companies.
In conjunction with Agenda 2010, this gave the country a 20-year boom.
That is exactly what the blueprint for today should be: It is wrong that the state pays millions of healthy people citizen's money and thus deprives them of companies as employees.
With more demands and the savings that can be achieved here, scope for relief could be developed, which - in combination with less bureaucracy - would be a turbocharger for “made in Germany”.
But the government, which is more concerned with its own survival than that of the companies, would have to reinvent itself to achieve this.
There won't be a big miracle.
The FDP is more likely to let the traffic light burst in the newly erupted dispute over the right economic policy.
With his cunning statement from the weekend that even Economics Minister Robert Habeck has now admitted that the direction of the traffic light's economic policy urgently needs to be changed, Lindner has already set the trap for his coalition partners.
George Anastasiadis