According to Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), research and innovation in Germany too often have to struggle with unnecessary obstacles - including cumbersome funding and control structures.

In addition, Germany and Europe would have to secure more technological sovereignty in order not to get into difficult dependencies in view of the competition between America and China, Merkel warned on Wednesday at the research summit in 2021 with representatives from companies and science.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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    "If we want to assert ourselves with our European social and economic models with our ideas of sustainability and a future worth living in, then we have to be more innovative, more productive than other parts of the world and in many ways also become faster," she warned.

    A very offensive technology funding in China and America, where the state directs "large amounts of money" into innovations, leads them to the conclusion: "We have to do that too."

    Merkel explained that she was concerned about the long-time skeptical attitude of German car manufacturers to operate their own battery cell production.

    This is strategically important in order to be able to drive technological developments yourself.

    At the same time, it is also about sovereignty as protection against dependencies in the delivery relationships that are difficult to resolve in an emergency.

    With a view to the domestic innovation and funding landscape, Merkel positively highlighted the example of the new “Agency for Leap Innovations”, which is supposed to act more freely than ministries and authorities in the use of funding.

    Government agencies that would have to continuously prove to the Federal Audit Office that resources were used economically and effectively could not take too much of the risk.

    "Then it won't work," said Merkel and advised that the agency concept should be used even more for research funding.

    She also advocated simpler control structures: Today, companies operating nationwide would have to deal with 17 data protection authorities and up to 51 ethics committees on the way to an innovation, reported Merkel.

    That too has to go faster, she demanded.