Employer President Rainer Dulger sees the forthcoming closed-door conference of the traffic light coalition as an opportunity for a new course in economic policy. “Our country’s strategic competitiveness must now be the focus of all political action. Some of the traffic lights don’t understand that – and are sleepwalking through the crisis,” said Dulger of the German Press Agency with a view to the closed conference from Tuesday on Schloss Meseberg in Brandenburg.

The government is threatening to stumble on the economic policy restart at the beginning of the second half of the government, said Dulger as President of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations (BDA). “The longer politicians wait, the harder it hits the location – and the greater the loss of prosperity. Meseberg is an opportunity for a change of course.” Germany is in a difficult situation, companies need to be relieved of additional wage costs and bureaucracy.

Businesses and the “hard-working middle” of the population should be at the center of the political debate, Dulger said. “Instead, the voters are told that the industry is bad for our environment. The fact that our prosperity has to be generated just as much as the money for social welfare is often concealed. Something doesn’t add up.”