BERLIN – Hundreds of German entrepreneurs and business representatives gathered in Berlin and other cities on Wednesday to call for a change of government after February’s national election.
“A lot has to happen before entrepreneurs demonstrate,” Arndt Kirchhoff, an employer representative from North Rhine-Westphalia, said at the flagship demonstration in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
The turnout was a few hundred participants at 1 pm on a working day. “Normal people have to work at this time,” one demonstrator’s poster acknowledged.
But Germany’s ongoing economic slump, which has seen the country’s real GDP stagnate at 2019 levels, has sparked anger among the country’s business community, which is now urging voters to keep the economy in mind when they go to the polls on 23 February.
The next government must enable an “economic turnaround”, a group of 140 business associations wrote in a joint statement, mirroring the rhetoric of the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance currently leading the polls, and the pro-market FDP, whose party leader Christian Lindner was sacked as finance minister in Olaf Scholz’s three-party government in November.
This must include cutting red tape “far exceeding all previous attempts”, lowering social security contributions and corporate taxes, and focusing “on EU emissions trading as a key climate policy instrument”, they argue.
“For years, warnings from the business community have simply been ignored by large sections of the political community,” Kirchoff said at the demonstration.
This was not the case on Wednesday.
The gathering, held just a few hundred metres away from the German parliament, was attended by several prominent CDU/CSU and FDP politicians to show support.
“Production is leaving the country, businesses are closing down and going bankrupt. That is the reality,” Gitta Connemann, head of the CDU’s employers’ wing, told Euractiv on the sidelines of the demonstration.
She joined other prominent members of her party at the demonstration, including secretary general Carsten Linnemann and former health minister Jens Spahn.
However, Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) did not attend, instead holding a press conference on the state of the German economy at the same time.
This is “scandalous,” Connemann said, arguing that “politicians would do well to talk to the companies and not about them.”
FDP boss Lindner also appeared at the demonstration, receiving both applause and boos when being announced as a participant.
“We gave up some of our political posts, as ministers and so on, in order to bring about such a policy change,” Reinhard Houben, the FDP’s speaker for economic affairs, told Euractiv at the demonstration, which he hoped would be “recognised and rewarded.”
The FDP is currently polling below the 5% threshold needed to enter the next parliament.
The demonstration, did, however, spark a small counter-demonstration by trade unionists which was held just across the street.
“We are also concerned about the economic situation,” said Annette Hartmetz from the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB).
“But we believe that Germany does not have a location problem, but a boardroom problem,” she said, blaming poor management decisions for the current economic slump.
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