In the dispute over the entry of the Chinese state-owned company Cosco in a container terminal in the port of Hamburg, the federal cabinet is to decide on a compromise today. Specifically, it is about a so-called partial ban, as government circles said. According to this, Cosco would be able to participate in the Tollerort terminal of the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA, as agreed more than a year ago – but only with 24.9 percent and not with 35 percent as previously planned.
With the partial ban, a strategic participation should be prevented and the participation reduced to a purely financial participation, it said. Among other things, the acquiring company should be prohibited from being granted contractual veto rights in strategic business or personnel decisions. She should also not be allowed to appoint any members of the management board. It is not yet clear whether Cosco will agree to the compromise.
Habeck warns of new dependencies
The compromise that is now emerging is controversial in the traffic light coalition. Under the impression of recent experiences with Russia and the dependence on its gas supplies, a political dispute broke out over the question of whether Chinese participation should be allowed. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) warned of new dependencies and wanted to completely ban Chinese entry. Other ministries wanted this too.
However, according to media reports, the Chancellery urged the entry to take place. If the cabinet does not decide this week, the sale is automatically approved as agreed by Cosco and HHLA, it said.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), who is traveling to China at the beginning of November, recently emphasized that nothing had been decided and that many questions still had to be clarified. He also pointed out that it was not about selling the port. The land itself is 100 percent owned by the Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
Already eight Cosco holdings in Europe
The Cosco Group also operates the world’s fourth largest container shipping company. Their ships have been calling at the Tollerort terminal for more than 40 years. In return for the stake, Cosco wants to make Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT) a preferred transhipment point in Europe. Shipping company shares in terminals are common in global container logistics. Cosco itself already holds shares in eight terminals in Europe alone.
The leader of the Young Liberals in the FDP, Franziska Brandmann, called on the federal government and her own party to stop Cosco’s planned participation in the terminal in the port of Hamburg. Anything else is also a pity for the FDP. “It has become painfully clear that the grand coalition has acted too naively in its dealings with Russia and has thus led Germany to become dependent on energy policy,” Brandmann told the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”. This “security policy naivety” must come to an end with the traffic light government.
Trittin: “This makes you a bit open to blackmail”
Jürgen Trittin, foreign policy spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag, calls the solution that is now emerging a “damage limitation” in the newspapers of the Bayern media group, since “the conversion of a strategic participation into a financial one” is now planned.
“But you have to realize that there are already Chinese holdings in the Port of Hamburg’s direct competitors, such as in Rotterdam and Antwerp. This makes you a little open to economic blackmail,” said Trittin. He called for “European regulation for such cases, otherwise each member country will do its own thing – and Beijing will then play it off against each other.”
