Conservative opposition warns of danger of economic decline in Germany
Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union party, warned that the country could face economic decline and called on the government to take immediate action.
The leader of the German conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, Friedrich Merz, warned this Sunday in statements to dpa of the danger of an economic decline in Germany and asked the federal government to take measures to counteract it.
In the height of summer, unemployment figures rose and, despite a shortage of skilled workers, the number of insolvencies in the first half of 2023 was 16 % higher than the previous year, Merz said. In addition, he argued that industrial production is declining. “This should worry us deeply as a country with a high share of industry,” he said.
“Germany is losing competitiveness,” warned the opposition leader in the Bundestag (Lower House of Parliament). “This is not an abrupt process that triggers an economic crisis overnight. On the contrary, we are experiencing a stealthy process of deindustrialization of our country.” This, he said, must be taken very seriously. “At this moment, something is happening that may no longer be reversible. The federal government must react now,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed to the Executive.
One has to wonder if the labor market really continues to function properly with 769,000 vacant jobs and 2.55 million unemployed, Merz said. “Or are we preparing to meet labor needs only with increasing immigration?” he warned. If that is the case, he said, the federal government must ask itself why it fails to guarantee that foreigners who have already applied weeks or months ago can at least come.
“Applications that reach five-digit figures are still not processed in the representative entities of the Federal Republic of Germany abroad,” criticized Merz.
For this reason, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance proposed to completely separate immigration from the labor market and asylum procedures and establish a purely digital processing of residence and work permits. However, the federal government rejected it.
“We urgently need state-of-the-art digital procedures to reach the (foreign workers) we need for our labor market,” argued Merz, who also said that the processes for recognizing certificates and professional qualifications of, for example, Ukrainian refugees in Germany, they are taking too long.
Source: dpa
(Reference image source: Ümit Yildirim, Unsplash)
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