Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) wants to bring Germany back to the fore in the location competition.

The FDP politician therefore asked his experts to develop measures for a "growth package 2023/2024".

The internal paper is now complete, is dated December 22nd and is available to the FAZ.

The core thesis is: The turning point in security policy must be followed by a turning point in economic policy.

Manfred Schäfers

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Whether energy, infrastructure, skilled workers or digitization - the Federal Republic has fallen behind everywhere.

"After a decade of distribution policy and increased demand, we must risk a regulatory turnaround to supply policy," it says.

"We had many trained specialists and produced with relatively low energy costs." This meant that local disadvantages such as high taxes and levies, complex bureaucracy and the country's slow pace of modernization could be afforded to some extent.

"But now the high inflation rates, deficits in modernization, the shortage of skilled workers and uncertainties in the energy supply are driving up the costs of doing business in our country."

Exit from the price brakes

Despite all efforts, energy costs are likely to remain higher than in previous years.

As a result, the competitiveness of German companies is under pressure and jobs are no longer secured.

"We cannot meet this challenge in the long term with more state money and industrial policy subsidies." International capital must be directed to Germany instead of being expelled.

The section on tax policy deals with averting further burdens (“fiscal policy firewall”), the repeated introduction of degressive depreciation, an investment premium (“Super-AfA”), an extension of savings depreciation, and an expansion of research funding ("e.g. on material costs") and an improvement in employee capital participation ("still in 2023").

But that's not all: "In addition to the measures mentioned, a general reduction in the tariff for income and corporation tax is also an option.

Alternatively, the elimination of the supplementary tax ('solidarity surcharge') is conceivable.”

The recommended trend reversal in economic policy includes the appeal to make the labor market more employment-friendly.

In the direction of Family Minister Lisa Paus (Greens), it says: Transfer payments must be coordinated in such a way that the incentives to work would be strengthened.

"Otherwise, when designing basic child security, there is a considerable risk that the incentives for low-skilled workers to work will be impaired for good motives." Special regulations for short-time work benefits ("BMF must continue to pay attention to the incentives for short-time work benefits,

According to the internal paper, the Ministry of Finance intends to present a tax bureaucracy relief law next year.

It goes on to say: "We are examining how other projects can be accelerated analogously to the LNG Acceleration Act." The same applies to the public procurement procedures.

Finally, Lindner's people are campaigning for a new attempt at a free trade agreement with the United States, the continued operation of the nuclear power plants beyond April 2023 and the lifting of the fracking ban in order to be able to develop domestic gas deposits.

The idea of ​​not only suspending the increase in the CO2 price in 2023 is explosive within the coalition.

For the following years it must be checked whether the legislature could not intervene because of the increased market prices.

After the federal government's extremely high level of new borrowing this year, a separate section deals with securing stable public finances.

"People and companies must be able to rely on the state having sufficient resources and willing to intervene in order to maintain productive capacities and companies."

Finally, the Ministry of Finance is pushing for the social security systems, which are under pressure in the long term, to be designed to be demography-proof.

"There must be no expansion of benefits as long as they cannot be financed permanently without increasing contributions or grants from the federal budget."