Why Friedrich Merz needs to make us shareholders | EUROtoday

The Merz household additionally did not have a simple time motivating the kids to go for a household stroll on the weekend. The Chancellor spoke of three croaking youngsters on Monday night on the annual opening of the Deutsche Börse. But a minimum of he began speaking to his little daughter about shares, later rebuilt his portfolio together with her and aroused her lasting curiosity within the capital market. That was at a time earlier than ETFs. At a time when Norbert Blüm (CDU) was long-term employment minister and described the pension as utterly safe.

Friedrich Merz (CDU) would not say something like that on Monday night. Instead: “The statutory pension insurance will remain, but it will only become one component of a new overall level of provision in which private pension provision and company pension provision will play a much larger role than before.” Merz is aware of that the assembled monetary celebrities weren’t significantly enthusiastic lately when the federal authorities determined to expensively strengthen the statutory pension.

Merz didn’t point out the important thing phrases mom’s pension and holding line on Monday. In return he made a promise. “The discussion was not easy, but recognizing that a private and a company pension scheme, both funded, should play a much larger role in the overall level of provision for our population was a long way for the Social Democrats. Let me please combine this with a thank you to our Social Democratic coalition partner,” stated Merz. “We have already decided on it in the coalition agreement, and we will turn it into a sensible reform over the course of the year that starts at exactly this point, namely a strengthening of funded private and company pension schemes.”

He was positive to obtain applause from round 900 guests. The host inventory trade boss Stephan Leithner spoke of a house recreation for Merz, in spite of everything Merz was a member of the supervisory board of the German Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2015. Is that why he’s now making politics for the inventory markets? Merz places the meant thrust into a bigger framework: “This is a paradigm shift in German pension policy. This will also trigger a significant growth spurt for the capital market of the Federal Republic of Germany. But above all, it will ensure that a significantly larger proportion of the employees in our country participate in the growth of our wealth, our national wealth. And that, by the way, is also a final, overdue, unredeemed reform of Christian social teaching: the participation of employees in our country in the national wealth of our economy.”

Merz and Leithner know that this requires a different view of risks. Merz sometimes prefers a little more “naive joie de vivre” from Americans than the “deep skepticism” here. But we should all be more willing to “venture into the unknown” instead of always checking everything for all conceivable risks according to the principle of caution. In his speech, Leithner had already pointed out the topic of the generational promise, which was very important to him and to which everyone had to explain themselves personally. Merz called out to the audience: “Start at home with your children, go to their schools, talk to the teachers, be a multiplier.” Merz countered the record number of 14 million shareholders in Germany that Leithner mentioned by pointing out that fifty million adults were still not there. He stated that 28 million shareholders would be a success at the end of the legislative period.

Exactly what the reforms look like will be the subject of the pension commission under Frank-Jürgen Weise, who was also present on Monday and to whom Merz is very grateful for plunging into “this adventure”. Merz mentioned keywords such as stock taxation in America, but also the obsession with guarantees in Germany, which has counteracted previous pension reforms. Merz is not only concerned with better pension provision for Germans, but also with the other side of the coin, the borrowers on the capital market, i.e. the companies willing to invest. They should find a broader and deeper capital market in this country, i.e. all of us as willing venture capitalists, so that they are no longer forced to look for money further abroad.

In his speech, Merz ranged from the internal market reforms in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s following the report by EU Commission President Jacques Delors to the reports by former ECB President Mario Draghi and former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, which today again call for a much closer and deeper connection between the EU’s internal and capital markets. Merz spoke out in favor of always using the global market as the relevant benchmark in EU competition law and thus allowing more European mergers.

Merz can also easily imagine a European champion on the stock exchanges and spoke of “perhaps the greatest lever we have for our European sovereignty and our competitiveness is that we can finally create large and liquid capital collection points and an efficient and efficient European financial market infrastructure in the relevant fields.” Deutsche Börse considers itself just as suitable for this as Euronext in Paris. Merz emphasized: “I have therefore agreed together with the French President, Emmanuel Macron, that we will also work together for rapid progress in the Franco-German alliance.”

Maybe that is why it isn’t referred to as Deutsche Börse or Euronext ultimately, however in some way each collectively. In any case, it was lots to speak about for the various company on Monday night, and a well-received perspective, as Merz urged pace. Europe has already wasted sufficient development potential previously many years.