After these TV debates, Germany seems to have no economic problems internationally or digitally, at least apparently none that are worth discussing.
The relationship to other countries and the skills in information technology (and how the two are sometimes connected) simply did not appear in the arguments between the three candidates for chancellor.
This is not primarily due to Olaf Scholz, Armin Laschet or Annalena Baerbock - they themselves and their parties have taken a position on this in the election programs. No, they weren't even asked about it, not even in the third TV triall on Sunday evening. As an alibi to ask briefly about the nationwide broadband expansion or how things are going with the computer equipment in schools, no, that's not enough.
In view of the current world situation, of course, both topics should be more at the top than at the bottom of the agenda. How secure and stable are the German supply chains when it comes down to it? How will the next government deal with the fact that China is now the most important sales and growth market for countless German companies - not only in the auto industry - and that relations between Washington and Beijing are also deteriorating? How does it intend to deal with the fact that key products such as modern semiconductors will presumably be in short supply for even longer? And how is the EU supposed to develop, taking on common debts for the first time? One would have liked to have heard the candidates, because all of these questions are ultimately about huge amounts and the concepts behind them,that Germany could fix for years.
Take semiconductors, for example: Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger recently discussed a double-digit billion investment for a real chip campus - but is demanding similar subsidies from German and / or European taxpayers as is currently usually paid in Asia. Should Germany do that? And if not, what is our country's strategy in view of the fact that the most advanced factories are currently located in Taiwan and South Korea, and thus in the region where the conflict between America and China for power and influence is essentially taking place?
Example of “digital sovereignty”: Within Europe, a central discussion revolves around how independent the continent should actually be in terms of key technologies, what it should be able to do itself. It's not just about state-of-the-art semiconductors, but also about cloud offerings (keyword Gaia-X), artificial intelligence or quantum computers. The federal government, which is still in office, has also initiated corresponding projects and initiatives in recent years. But how does it go on? And how much independence and from whom should it really be?
Take Brussels, for example: as a result of the pandemic, the European Union is issuing joint bonds for the first time. Is this the start of a long-term debt union, as many in this country fear? Which financial and economic integration at European level (with corresponding consequences for taxpayers) should Germany strive for in the long term? The viewpoints of the parties differ, and that would certainly have been the material for a television triad.
Instead, anyone who saw the program on Sunday, for example, could get the impression that the greatest economic policy challenge lay in rampant poverty in this country (which simply represented a distorted picture of reality) and fair wages for caregivers. The moderators, on the other hand, saved themselves and the viewers from looking outside and into the digital world, which is once again the right choice for CDU foreign politician Norbert Röttgen, who announced via the short message service Twitter a week ago after the Triell: "That rightly causes trouble, because people realize that we are not an island of the blessed. It's about nothing less than European cohesion and international order. ”And not just economically, by the way.