As of: February 17, 2024, 2:29 p.m
By: Peter Sieben
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The “Entrepreneurs NRW” association sees German industry in danger.
An ideology-driven policy is to blame.
But there is another threat before the European elections.
Düsseldorf - When the weather is good, you can almost see the Ruhr area in the distance from up here: where a large part of the NRW industry is still located, heavyweights of the German economy.
The latter is not doing too well, it was said at the traditional Ash Wednesday discussion of the State Association of Business Associations of North Rhine-Westphalia (“Entrepreneurs of North Rhine-Westphalia”) in Düsseldorf, where, as is well known, the Ruhr area’s desk is located.
Here on the twelfth floor of the association high-rise, people plan – and worry.
“Germany is the only industrialized country in the world that is shrinking.
The basis is crumbling,” says Arndt G. Kirchhoff, President of Unternehmer NRW.
This is also due to a wrong economic policy that needs to change as quickly as possible.
Entrepreneurs: Traffic light government is ideology-driven
“It is high time for the federal government to pull itself together,” said Kirchhoff.
The politics of the traffic light government are far too ideologically driven: “There are parliamentarians sitting there who approach policymaking ideologically.
They tell us how the economy works.
But they have no idea about it.”
Arndt Kirchhoff is President of the North Rhine-Westphalia State Association of Business Associations.
© Peter Sieben
PFAS ban is “out of touch with reality and scares the industry”
The boss of the traditional automotive supplier Kirchhoff Automotive also has what he sees as a fitting example with four letters: PFAS.
The acronym stands for a huge group of chemicals that are used in numerous everyday products such as smartphones, clothing and frying pans.
PFAS chemicals are also used for lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, for example.
The substances are deposited in the environment and in the human body and are suspected of being hazardous to health.
A ban on PFAS is therefore being discussed in the EU, and Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) also wants clear restrictions.
Kirchhoff thinks it's not a good approach from an entrepreneur's perspective: “Steffi Lemke first bans everything and then wants to make exceptions.
This is completely wrong and unrealistic and scares the industry.” In his view, a sensible policy is not to ban PFAS in principle, but rather to work to ensure that individual, particularly critical chemicals are replaced with alternatives.
Concern about the 2024 European elections: “If you want to completely ruin our country and Europe, then you have to do the Dexit”
He is particularly worried about the European elections.
This year is “perhaps the most important election since the founding of the European Union,” said the association president.
“The question that is being decided is whether we want to have a free Europe based on the rule of law or one that allows isolation, extremism and nationalism.” A united and capable European Union is more important than ever before.
He sees a rise in extremists and populists who are endangering Europe's economy and postulating that Germany should leave the EU.
“We trade over two thirds of our products in and with Europe.
This is our home market,” says Kirchhoff.
“If you want to completely ruin our country and Europe, then you have to do the Dexit.”
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He also indirectly commented on the so-called secret meeting in Potsdam, where AfD politicians discussed the deportation of millions of people with right-wing extremists.
“We would like to recruit skilled workers from abroad and then individual people in Germany walk around and talk about deportation.
We will defend ourselves against this, with the full support of all our employees and the unions.” He strongly advises against “putting a cross in a certain place in the election as a protest and then supporting extremists.”
Dexit is in the AfD’s election manifesto: “You have to say that clearly”
The association is not explicitly concerned with the AfD; they do not want to engage in party politics.
But Johannes Pöttering, managing director of Unternehmer NRW, added: “The AfD has Dexit in its election program, that has to be made clear.”
Several large German companies had recently warned about the AfD.