There is no applause, although it is an unexpectedly honest answer that Catherine Loclair is giving on the stage of Industry Day in Berlin. The moderator had asked the manager of the family business Orafol from Oranienburg in Brandenburg if she would start another company in Germany today.
Orafol produces self-adhesive special films for airplanes, ships and cars. One always felt welcome in Brandenburg, says Loclair, and the location is not up for debate either. But found here again? Rather not.
It is the logical consequence of what the manager and many other entrepreneurs are describing at the event of the Federation of German Industries these days: The location is going downhill. “Germany has to be careful,” says Loclair.
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The country slipped in all international rankings. She does not perceive a “Germany pace”, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced, meaning an acceleration of the approval processes and procedures. “We’re more aware of it slowing down, not speeding up,” says Loclair. Medium-sized companies are confronted with a large number of regulations every day. “Our compliance department is growing and growing,” she says. “None of this contributes to the productivity of our plant.”
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Orafol is currently investing more than 100 million euros in both Germany and the USA. But while it takes three to four months for approval in America, it is two and a half years in Germany.
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If it happens in the USA, you get support from the authorities. A tank farm for liquid gas in Germany has been planned since March 2022, but approval is not in sight and it will probably take at least another year. “That’s why the tank containers are now lying in the Brandenburg sand,” says Loclair.
In addition, the Germans fail to recognize the achievements of the industry. “Industry is something bad per se and destroys our environment,” she describes the attitude of many people. “What we would wish for is a clear commitment from politicians to Germany as an industrial location.” And then she can also take a dig at the huge subsidy of almost ten billion euros that the federal government has just decided on for the planned semiconductor factory of the US group Don’t hold back on Intel in Magdeburg. “A subsidized settlement policy should not be confused with a sustainable industrial policy,” says Loclair.
“This is a dangerous game”
In view of these practical descriptions, the CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who is sitting next to her, has it very easy that day. The day before, at Industry Day, the “opposition leader in the government” was a guest, and now he’s coming from Parliament too, Merz teases. What is meant is of course the appearance of Finance Minister Christian Lindner, whose FDP had taken over the work of the opposition in recent weeks and was tearing up the heating law that had already been negotiated and passed in the government.
At the BDI event, Merz made it clear that a decision had to be made: “Germany is an industrial country and should remain an industrial country,” demands Merz. There is by no means a consensus on this in this country. You shouldn’t define which industries you would like to continue and which ones. “It’s a dangerous game.”
The state must set the right framework conditions and remain open to technology. “We are currently experiencing too much assumed knowledge here in Berlin,” says Merz. “From members of the government who say today that they know what technology we will be using in ten, twenty or thirty years.” Electromobility and heat pumps could be one answer, but not the only one.
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After the heating debacle
Merz also contradicted Chancellor Scholz’s statement that so much had been left undone under the previous CDU-led government, especially when it came to climate protection, that it was now necessary to speed things up. “The impression is given that this government is only just beginning with climate protection,” he says.
40 percent of the CO₂ savings target has already been achieved. But Merz also admits: “The greater part of the journey still lies ahead of us.” The Union does not question the fact that the transformation to climate neutrality must succeed, the difference to “large parts of the government” and the “published opinion” is but the conviction: “It works with our market economy and it works with freedom.”
The Heating Act has shown that there is massive resistance to the government’s approach. “We have to make fundamental decisions, but that doesn’t work without the population, only with it, that doesn’t work without a market economy, but only with it,” says Merz. Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) considers his policy to be a market economy, but it is not about making the market yourself, but only about creating the framework conditions.
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Distribution, costs, pitfalls
The transformation will only succeed if it is combined with a “new promise of prosperity”. “Otherwise it will fail – and it must not fail,” said the CDU leader. To do this, new trade agreements would have to be concluded, but in order for that to succeed, they had to be “once again limited to pure trade policy”.
But that assumes that the Greens no longer want to dictate their social and environmental policies to other countries. Germany must also finally clearly state its own interests: “We have to do something that we weren’t born with: we have to define strategic interests,” demands Merz.
You can see from the national security strategy how difficult it is for the federal government. The China strategy that has been announced for a long time is still missing, and attempts are being made to avoid the question of what the future relationship with the communist People’s Republic should look like. “Germany can no longer afford that,” says Merz. “We can’t avoid that answer.”
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