BERLIN (dpa-AFX) – Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has called for more courage in the ongoing reform process. “We still see a lot of hesitancy when it comes to the necessary reforms,” he said at the Family Business Day in Berlin.
In this context, he pointed out the resistance to changes in affluent societies in general, which the federal government is now also dealing with. “I say this without any sarcasm: changing a prosperous society is much more difficult than rebuilding a country after war and destruction.”
What the federal government has set out to do requires a “willingness to change based on prosperity, perhaps based on an illusion of prosperity,” said Merz. This prosperity will prove to be an illusion “if we don’t act now and if we don’t initiate these changes with this coalition now.”
“Believe in ourselves again”
Merz had already urgently called for more willingness to change in his government statement in the Bundestag that morning. “There is no reason that we as a country, as a society, don’t believe in ourselves again,” he told the family business owners. There is no reason to doubt that Germany can achieve a leading place in the world in transition./mfi/DP/men