Berlin The traffic light coalition wants to significantly tighten the legal requirements for foreign investments in sensitive technology areas and critical infrastructures. The precautions are intended in particular to limit Chinese influence in Germany.
Beijing wants to “create dependencies and exert influence,” said Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) to the newspapers of the Funke media group. “Therefore, foreign trade law must be changed. The Ministry of Finance took an initiative on the occasion of the Cosco case.” Lindner did not give any details about his initiative.
With the partial prohibition of the deal, a strategic stake in the terminal is prevented and the acquisition is reduced to a purely financial stake, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which argued with a danger to public order and security. Among other things, Cosco is prohibited from being granted contractual veto rights in strategic business or personnel decisions. The Ministry of Economics had examined an agreement concluded in September 2021 between the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA and Cosco Shipping.
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Habeck wanted to completely ban Chinese entry in view of the experiences with Russia – as did other ministries, which also warned of risks for critical infrastructure. However, the chancellery pushed for a compromise. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wants to travel to Beijing with a business delegation in the middle of the week.
SPD boss Klingbeil wants clear exclusion criteria for certain transactions
Support for a kind of “Lex China” came from the ranks of the coalition partners. The SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil campaigned for clear exclusion criteria for security-related transactions with the People’s Republic. “China has to stay out when it comes to security and the sovereignty of our continent,” said Klingbeil on Sunday at the Juso federal congress in Oberhausen.
“When it comes to digitization, when it comes to critical infrastructure, when it comes to the question of artificial intelligence, data, quantum computers, all of these questions, then China has no place in Europe.”
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The co-leader of the SPD-Left, Sebastian Roloff, told the Handelsblatt that he was “fundamentally open” to a revision of foreign trade law. “Our critical infrastructure must be protected, and if changes in the law make this easier, then this path should be followed,” added the MP.
The deputy head of the Greens parliamentary group, Konstantin von Notz, also sees a need for action. In the past few days it has become clear “that there is an urgent need for legal readjustments in order to be able to prohibit strategically motivated takeovers by foreign investors even more easily in the future – also and especially with a view to critical infrastructures,” von Notz told the Handelsblatt. “This is also an important building block for filling the turning point with political life.”
The background is also the planned takeover of a chip factory from the Dortmund company Elmos by a subsidiary of the Chinese group Sai Microelectronics. The sale must be approved by the federal government. The case caused a stir mainly because the government would apparently defy the advice of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution by approving it. He advised against approving the deal.
Listen to our podcast here: How Germany wants to free itself from its dependence on China
Von Notz warned that the warnings from the secret services should be taken “very seriously”. The realization that one should not become too dependent on a future world power was only slowly gaining ground with regard to China.
The CDU domestic politician Alexander Throm suggested temporarily banning Chinese companies from investing in German companies. “The federal government must now present a risk analysis as soon as possible, in which areas corporate investments should be restricted for reasons of strategic independence,” said Throm. “Until then, I also think a temporary moratorium on participation is worth considering.”
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