East Germany: Prime Minister stuck to East Commissioner

The East German countries make extensive demands to the future coalitioners in the federal government. In this way, they demand “an appropriate representation” of the new countries in the new federal government and insist on an East Commissioner in the Chancellery.

“The representative for East Germany must continue to be equipped with cabinet rank in order to keep the structural differences between east and west visible and to initiate new economic and social impulses for East Germany,” says the joint declaration of the heads of government of Saxony, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. The seven -page paper is exclusive to that star before.

As an East representative of the outgoing federal government, the SPD member of the Bundestag, Member of the Bundestag, Carsten Schneider. He is located in the Chancellery as Minister of State and is allowed to participate in all meetings of the cabinet.

Most recently, the Union had repeatedly made demands to abolish the office. He kept the post in the 35th year of German reunification “for overtaking”, said some Union parliamentary group vice Sepp Müller, who himself comes from Saxony-Anhalt.

The Eastern Minister of Eastern Minister are now opposed to this and at the same time make their claims for the composition of the new federal government clear: “We also expect Federal Minister to be appointed with an East German background.”

The East Minister Presidential Conference also requires preferred participation in the planned 500 billion investment package. The East must “find a highlighted consideration” in order to compensate for the “location disadvantages of the East German structurally weak regions”, they said. Specifically, an infrastructure program for university research is required in order to specifically overcome “structural deficit” in this area.

In addition, the heads of government insist on additional measures against the shortage of skilled workers in the east and an “experiment clause for unbureaucratic test areas”. The reduction in electricity tax already agreed in the explorations of the Union and SPD to the European minimum measure must also apply to all households and small to medium -sized companies.

In the transport sector, the heads of government want a better connection to Poland and the Czech Republic and “forced measures to expand and electrify the rail and road network”. The funds for regional and local transport would have to be adapted to the actual price increases. A “long-term stabilization of the pension level at 48 percent and pension contributions”, a “financial relief of the East German municipalities of old debts” and the “increased settlement of federal authorities, EU institutions and research institutions in East Germany”.

The Thuringian CDU government leader Mario Voigt described the position paper as a “clear sign” to the new federal government. “Now is the time for courageous decisions and a policy that sees East Germany as an equal engine for all-German success,” said the head of the East Minister Presidential Conference star. “The topics of the East should consider a new federal government more.”

For the Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig, the aim is to strengthen “democracy in the east” and to achieve “equivalent living conditions”. “The new federal government has to do more for the east,” said the deputy SPD chairman of the star. “And we have the clear expectation that the East will be represented in the upcoming federal government.”