Marie-Luise Wolff, CEO of Entega in Darmstadt, heads the Future Council with Volker Wieland. Bild: Wonge Bergmann
A future council should answer the question of how Hessen can adapt to economic change. An economics professor and a CEO will lead it.
“The timing and the topics are exactly right.” At least that’s the view of the duo who will coordinate the work of the 26 representatives from companies, trade unions and science. It consists of Marie-Luise Wolff, the CEO of Entega in Darmstadt, and Volker Wielandonce one of the “economic wise men” at national level and to this day Director of the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability at Frankfurt’s Goethe University.
The committee intends to present an interim report in August and, if possible, a final paper before the year is out. The two chairmen emphasized the independence of their work when they presented the plans for this on Friday in the State Chancellery after a first “summit talk” together with Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) and Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir (The Greens) presented.
The committee convened the state government. Large companies are represented Lufthansa, Fraport, Opel, Merck and Commerzbank, but also small businesses such as the environmental printing company Lokay from Reinheim and the Blechdruckerei Limburg. They want to develop concrete recommendations for state politicians in monthly meetings. Al-Wazir said the proposals would shape the economic policy debates in the next election period. “Whoever rules then,” added Rhein.
Heads the Future Council with Marie-Luise Wolff: Volker Wieland, Director of the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability at Goethe University. Bild: Marie Luise Kolb
Wolff identified a “polycrisis” and named the changing relationship between the West and China as one of the challenges. The country has secured a monopoly on rare earths, the raw material of the future. The resulting current dependency is a geopolitical issue, but also of great importance for the Hessian economy.
The shortage of skilled workers is growing into a comprehensive shortage of workers, explained Wolf. Here it is important to clarify which solutions migration offers. “The expansion of renewable energies has become a location factor,” said the Entega boss. There is now consensus on this in business.
Digitization has priority
Wolff and Wieland unanimously reported that the first round of the “Economic Summit” had already approached the issues in a very concrete manner. Wieland cited the demand for more speed as an example. Companies need permits for their projects more quickly than before.
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It needs to be clarified whether the authorities need to hire more staff or whether the standards of the regulations need to be reduced. In such questions, the traditional contrast between companies and unions doesn’t matter, according to Wieland.
First of all, the committee wants to deal with digitization. Everyone agrees that future technologies such as artificial intelligence offer unimagined opportunities for new business models. At the end of the work there is the strategic positioning of Hesse at national and European level, said Rhein. Creating the right framework for business and industry is the task of politics. It has been in a global system and subsidy competition for years. “But we’re not starting from scratch,” says Al-Wazir.
Source: htr.
