The Green Party’s Chancellor candidate, Robert Habeck, aims to make Germany an attractive location for newly founded top companies.
In a guest article published on Monday in the “Handelsblatt”, Habeck proposes, among other things, that the founding process of new companies should be simplified and that they should be freed from as many bureaucratic requirements as possible in the first years. He also suggests that companies could found themselves online through a single portal.
Habeck also proposes to shape the tax system in a more innovation-friendly way by introducing an investment premium and further improving the tax-funded research promotion. “We need a new era of founders” writes the Green Party politician. Germany is too rarely the place where new top companies are founded.
In the article, Habeck sketches out an “economic agenda” with the focus on unleashing a new innovation and founding dynamic in Germany. The incumbent Federal Minister of Economics warns against the fact that more and more top companies are emerging in the USA and China: “In the USA, a class of tech billionaires has emerged, which, on the one hand, creates an enormous economic dynamic through groundbreaking innovations, but, on the other hand, is increasingly openly pursuing a libertarian-authoritarian ideology along with the future Trump administration.”
For new startups and foundings, Habeck proposes improved access to risk capital. The European Capital Markets Union must be decisively pushed forward, and a citizen’s fund should be introduced in the pension insurance, which should also invest in European startups. Furthermore, his agenda includes “more openness to the opportunities of new technologies”. To catch up on Germany’s lag in digital technologies and artificial intelligence, Habeck suggests a “desludging of data protection”. He also wants to significantly increase investments in education, science, and research, which should be achieved through a new Germany fund and a reform of the debt brake.