The End of German Leadearship? – opening remarks by Bence Bauer at Karpacz Economic Forum

I am delighted I can be here in Karpacz. I was already a participant as a student at the Krynica Forum a long time, some 20 years ago and now I’m thrilled to be here again as a speaker. Thank you for the opportunity.

You might wonder what a Hungarian guy is doing here with four German experts and politicians on this stage. My part is to highlight a specific angle, how we in Central Europe look on Germany.

Let us start by considering how things were with Germany in the last years. For us Hungarians, I can speak pars pro toto for my Hungarian compatriots, we love Germany. Germany was for all of us always an example, a pattern, how to do it the right way.

Germany was a massive inspiration for us – with its economy growth, rationality, stability, engineering skills, German car manufacturing. All these things we believe today have changed and in some cases Germany is not always an example anymore for us. And we are a little bit sad because of that. We are unhappy about the state of Germany and about the state of the Germany economy. For a long time we learned from Germany positive things. Today we can learn from Germany how not to do things in respect of economy.

When we talk about leadership in Europe, or globally, we have to understand that leadership is not coming from nowhere. You need to work on Leadership. For leadership you need to have inner stability in your country, economic perspective, economic growth. We have to have security, national security. Also, we have to have a good situation in our country when it comes to cohesion. There must be inner peace, inner stability, low delinquency rates, ni inner division between the country’s eastern and western part, for instance. We believe that in this field Germany was deteriorating the last years – unfortunately.

We would like to have a strong Germany. We would like to like see Berlin taking a leading role in Europe, not only politically, but also economically. However, I am afraid, that the country has reacted in a negative way and very slowly on global processes.

For instance, let us look at the case of German car manufacturing. We have many, many companies in Hungary that are related to the German economy with its car producers. This is a big challenge also for us. When Germany is declining economically, it is a tragedy for all of us in Central Europe, both in Poland and Hungary. We are deeply interconnected. As such, every single problem Germany has with its economy will also be a trouble for all of us here. Therefore, we have to hope that the situation will improve.

In the last years we have seen a decline, including political instability with governments coming and going, with early elections in Germany. We have not witnessed such developments before to this extent. When we see the situation of the German government today, I am sceptical if they might tackle all the important questions that they have been elected for. Previously, the social democrats have been governing, now the Christian democrats are governing again. Yet I do not see a big change, which is actually needed now. In the campaign we heard many things and there must be a rapid change. Many things must be done anew.

In Hungary, we try to learn the good things from Germany, as I told you. We managed to create one million new workplaces in the last years. We established a workfare society with low taxes and low bureaucracy. We managed to bring people to work while also establishing political stability and low delinquency rates – because we wanted to be like the Germans. But during the time we did it, Germany changed in a manner that raises our concern.