With the former Baden-Württemberg state minister, a political professional will in future lead the operative business of the BDI.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Just a week ago, Tanja Gönner was still traveling with the Federal Chancellor. The 52-year-old accompanied Olaf Scholz (SPD) in Senegal on his trip to Africa. In the near future, Gönner will see the Federal Chancellor much more often. Because the lawyer rises to become one of the most influential string pullers in Berlin. Gönner will be the first woman in the history of the Federation of German Industries (BDI) to take over the general management. Access to the chancellor is guaranteed in this job. Gönner’s appointment is scheduled for June 20th.
With the former Baden-Württemberg state minister, a political professional is leading the operative business of the influential trade association. In the past, Gönner had repeatedly campaigned for climate protection. Her appointment is therefore also a signal for the future orientation of the BDI, which Gönner himself left in no doubt about.
The transformation to climate neutrality, the challenges in the international context and acceptance in society are major tasks that she faces “with respect and with great anticipation,” she said after her change was official. She succeeds Joachim Lang, who declared at the beginning of February that he wanted to leave the BDI.
As a former minister in Baden-Württemberg and from her many years of leadership of the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), Gönner brings “a broad profile of experience to the table,” said BDI boss Siegfried Russwurm. She has “excellent qualifications” to represent German industry nationally and internationally, to help shape its course in climate policy and to strengthen its international competitiveness,” said Russwurm.
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Difficult managerial task at the BDI
In fact, Gönner fits in well with the requirement profile of the BDI. The trade association is a giant tanker, representing 40 industry associations with more than 100,000 companies and around eight million employees. Precisely because of its size and its complex membership structure, the BDI is by no means easy to manage. And in the association scene in Berlin, quite a few are of the opinion that the association has not yet arrived quite up to date. As the new general manager, Gönner could now thoroughly air the BDI.
Gönner started her career in the Junge Union, and at the end of the 1990s she was deputy head of the Junge Union under the current president of the Automobile Association, Hildegard Müller. Müller is also said to have made a significant contribution to Gönner’s move to the BDI. Like Müller, Gönner is considered a “black-green” in the Union. This should not be helpful for future cooperation with Müller, but with other business associations whose chief lobbyists are increasingly being recruited from the Green Party.
After entering the Bundestag, Gönner moved to Baden-Württemberg in 2004 as Minister for the Environment, later also becoming Minister for Social Affairs and Transport. The trained lawyer was considered one of the active posts in the Baden-Württemberg cabinet at the time and became the hope of the south-west CDU. Again and again she was traded for ministerial posts under Chancellor Merkel in the federal government.
The rise to the top was not successful
But that didn’t happen for reasons of proportionality. And the rise in the Southwest CDU also faltered. Gönner first lost a campaign candidacy for the CDU faction chair in 2010, and one year later for the chair in your state district.
After the CDU lost the election to the Greens in Baden-Württemberg, Gönner switched to GIZ in 2012 and, as head of the development aid organization, was in charge of 25,000 employees in 125 countries. “She knows how to operate big machines,” says someone who knows her well.
In addition to this international perspective, she also brings with her the ecological thinking required for her new job from her time at GIZ and as State Minister for the Environment. The two mega-topics for German industry in the next few years will be the ecological restructuring of the economy and the reorganization of the global economy. In particular, the question of how much business German corporations can and should do with autocratic states is becoming an even greater tightrope walk for the BDI than it has been in the past.
Gönner’s task as general manager will be to uphold the interests of German industry in this process of change, without standing there as a constant brakeman. In doing so, it will no doubt have to give some bad news to its member companies. In return, patrons are also well paid: the new job is said to be worth around half a million euros.
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