Former VW chief warns Germany drifting towards ‘welfare state’

Former Volkswagen Group chief executive Matthias Müller has warned that Germany is drifting towards what he describes as a ‘welfare state’, in which citizens rely increasingly on the government while taking on less personal responsibility.

In an interview with the news website T-Online, Müller argued that Germany is on a troubling political and social trajectory. ‘We are a nation of egoists,’ he said, repeating an earlier warning that the country could be moving towards ‘GDR 2.0’ – a reference to communist East Germany between 1949 and 1990.

Without fundamental reforms, he warned, the German economy risks falling further behind its international competitors.

Müller also criticised the growing role of non-governmental organisations. In recent years, he said, the state has transferred responsibilities to NGOs that it should be performing itself. Some of those organisations, he argued, could just as well be integrated directly into government ministries.

The former executive also questioned the strategy of Germany’s established political parties towards the Alternative for Germany (AfD). In his view, parties in the Bundestag should ‘to some extent open up’ the political ‘firewall’ that isolates the AfD.

Allowing greater political engagement, he suggested, could expose the party’s weaknesses. The current strategy of isolation, he argued, instead allows the AfD to ‘continue to develop unhindered’.

(est, welt)