Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz assumes that unemployment will no longer be an issue in Germany in a few years. “In the next few years, Germany will leave the problem of unemployment behind,” said the SPD politician on Monday after the cabinet meeting at Schloss Meseberg in Brandenburg, with a view to the upcoming restructuring of industry to make it more climate-friendly. “There is a lot to do for which we need a lot of women and men who work here in Germany, but also come from other countries, so that all the work that is now required in Germany can be done.” The unemployment rate is currently still low at 5.7 percent.
At the same time, Scholz called for more speed to make the industry climate-neutral by 2045. “By 2030, we need to put up four to five new wind turbines a day and the equivalent of more than 40 football pitches full of solar panels a day,” he said.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck also sees great opportunities for Germany in the climate-friendly restructuring of the economy. The Greens politician said in Meseberg that the country has every chance of overcoming the major challenges, even with digital options.
Habeck said that artificial intelligence, the digitization of the economy, new business models and transformation would bring prosperity and growth to Germany and Europe in the coming years and decades. “It is a gigantic industrial and employment program that we are pushing here.”
According to the Climate Protection Act, Germany should be CO2-neutral by 2045. This requires massive investments in the climate-friendly restructuring of the economy. The expansion of green electricity from wind and sun plays a key role.
With regard to differences within the coalition, Chancellor Scholz said that the conference in Meseberg had led to rapprochement on various issues within Ampel. “I can tell you that we have also made progress on many issues that we negotiate in day-to-day business,” said Scholz. The traffic light coalition now wants to complete a wide variety of projects “in a very short time”, said Scholz. “What has taken place here is a very tangible compromise and also the common conviction that this will succeed.”
In the past few weeks and months, there had been some bitter disputes between the coalition partners on various topics, such as the expansion of motorways, the planned end of the combustion engine, a ban on new oil and gas heating systems or the financing of basic child security.
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