Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, whose popularity is currently at an all-time low ahead of the 2025 general election, propose introducing a ‘Made in Germany’ bonus to encourage foreign companies to produce in Germany.
This is part of a core programmatic strategy for the upcoming national elections that Scholz and his Social Democratic Party (SPD) were to agree on at a retreat on Sunday (13 October).
Scholz is facing an uphill battle as his popularity in polls is the lowest on record (since 1997) of any chancellor. His party is polling in third place behind the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
But SPD leader Lars Klingbeil emphasised ahead of the retreat that Scholz’s party still believes in a comeback victory.
“Our goal is for the SPD to emerge as the strongest force in the Bundestag elections in twelve months and for us to continue to hold the chancellery,” Klingbeil told journalists in Berlin on Sunday.
“We know what a stretch this will be,” he added.
Klingbeil said the SPD would campaign on “better policies” specifically for Germany’s “working middle class”.
‘Made in Germany’ and minimum wage
The guideline strategy paper for the campaign drawn up by the party leadership proposes tax breaks for international investors – a so-called “Made in Germany bonus” for companies – and reduced grid fees for energy-intensive industries such as chemicals or glass.
The paper also suggests raising the minimum wage, cutting taxes for “95%” of Germans, and reintroducing a purchase bonus for electric vehicles—a similar national scheme was cancelled at the end of 2023, causing EV sales in Germany to plummet.
While Scholz and his coalition government are at an all-time low, the opposition parties CDU and AfD have been campaigning hard against the EU’s target of taking fossil-fuelled cars off the road by 2035. Their central argument is that the government’s push for electric mobility is ideological and not accepted in Germany.
According to Spiegel, the SPD’s paper hardly mentions foreign-policy topics such as the war in Ukraine and migration despite the tense geopolitical situation, with proposals focusing instead on tackling Germany’s economic slump.
At a CDU-CSU conference over the weekend, CSU, the CDU’s sister party in the automotive powerhouse state of Bavaria, pledged to “send Scholz into retirement.” Klingbeil said the SPD would target weaknesses of the conservative CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz: “The politics of yesterday must never be the country’s future.”
While Merz’s CDU/CSU list is polling above 30%, his personal popularity remains patchy. Recent polls saw him neck-and-neck with Scholz or only slightly above him if voters were to pick the chancellor in a direct election.
Klingbeil reaffirmed that the SPD backs Scholz as the lead candidate, contrary to previous rumours. His candidacy is slated to be confirmed at a conference in June 2025.
(Jasper Steinlein, Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)
Source: euractiv.com
