The economic structural change towards climate neutrality by 2045 is a tour de force for Germany, which is exacerbated by the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.

Russian gas was previously thought to be a cheap and safe source of energy for the transition, but has proven expensive and unsafe.

This energy price shock makes the path to climate neutrality more expensive and accelerates it.

Many energy-intensive production processes are put to the economic test earlier.

Either they are redesigned to be climate-neutral through massive capital investment or they lose their future viability.

This development affects all federal states.

But Saarland, as a classic industrial country, is particularly affected, as current studies by the DIW and the Ifo Institute show.

The automotive industry and the metal trades - including the steel industry - must reinvent themselves in the transformation.

And it is precisely in these two sectors that the employment shares in Saarland are significantly higher than in any other federal state.

The proportion of employees in the automotive industry in Saarland is 120 percent higher than the national average.

The classic automotive states of Baden-Württemberg, Lower Saxony and Bavaria follow in the next places, but they are only about 70 percent above the national average.

In metal processing, Saarland's share of employment is similarly singular, well ahead of the other leaders Thuringia, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg.

Structural change in the Saarland litmus test for all of Germany

The intensity of transformation is therefore greatest in Saarland in a national comparison and the structural change in Saarland is a litmus test for the whole of Germany.

If structural change succeeds in Saarland, it can succeed anywhere.

And that it succeeds everywhere is a declared task in the national interest and necessary to ensure equal living conditions.

No region may be detached.

Economically, climate transformation consists in particular of successfully replacing CO2 emissions with the help of climate-friendly investments, innovations and infrastructure.

This requires a massive boost in investment, which must and can primarily be managed by the private sector;

at least when the state sets the right framework conditions.

However, the right framework conditions are not enough.

The state must also make massive investments itself: to provide post-fossil infrastructure, to promote innovation and to support structural change in regional and industrial policy, also in view of a world market in which CO2 pricing is developing at different speeds.

In view of the Ukraine shock, the Saarland cannot cope with these investments from the current budget.

For structural and demographic reasons, the high transformation intensity in Saarland is combined with particularly low financial strength, despite the budget consolidation of the past decade and the restructuring aid from the federal government.

If the necessary transformation investments were not made due to the low financial strength, this would undermine future economic development and financial strength.

Such a downward spiral would be bad for Saarland.

And it would be a significant burden for the fiscal solidarity community of the federal and state governments.

Attractive jobs and added value for the post-fossil age

In order to counteract this, Saarland needs a transformation fund that complements the necessary support from the federal government and the EU for structural change on the state side.

As a special fund, it does justice to the year-spanning nature of the task.

The credit-financed establishment of the fund is not only necessary for economic and fiscal reasons, it is also constitutionally permissible as part of the emergency clause of the debt brake as a result of the exogenous shock.

The Saarland state government is therefore planning to propose to the Saarland state parliament the establishment of a transformation fund for structural change as part of a supplementary budget for 2022.