Herr Ragnitz, 34 Jahre nach der Deutschen Einheit erreicht das ostdeutsche Bruttoinlandsprodukt je Kopf 76 Prozent des westdeutschen Niveaus. Ist das Glas halb leer oder halb voll?
Ich rechne nicht damit, dass man jemals auf 100 Prozent kommen wird. Die strukturschwachen Länder im Westen sind bei etwa 90 Prozent des Durchschnitts. Das heißt, der Osten ist weit mehr am vollen als am leeren Glas dran. Da mögen noch zehn oder 15 Prozentpunkte draufkommen. Aber grundsätzlich ist der Osten von der Vielzahl von Standortbedingungen einfach so, dass er nie an den westdeutschen Durchschnitt herankommen wird. Der westdeutsche Durchschnitt ist ja auch stark geprägt durch die drei Länder im Süden, die besonders stark sind. Eigentlich ist der Osten schon ziemlich weit vorangekommen, aber es war sehr, sehr langsam. Das hätte man sich anders vorstellen können, aber immerhin.
Geht es mit dem Aufholen auch heute zu langsam?
Am Beginn ging es ganz schnell, in den ersten fünf Jahren nach der Wende, aber das war ja klar von dem damals sehr niedrigen Niveau. Aber seit Beginn der Nullerjahre ist es ja sehr, sehr langsam vorangekommen. Im Lauf von 20 Jahren hat der Osten nur noch zehn Prozentpunkte aufgeholt. Da würde ich schon sagen, dass man in Deutschland mehr erwartet oder zumindest mehr erhofft hatte. Schnell ist das eigentlich nicht.
Warum dauert es so lange?
Jetzt kann man viel über die Gründe philosophieren. Man hat diese strukturellen Probleme, man hat die Kleinteiligkeit der Wirtschaft. Und natürlich wächst die Wirtschaft im Westen auch, das Ziel bewegt sich. Im Westen sind die Unternehmen größer, da hat man mehr steigende Skalenerträge in der Produktion und dadurch mehr Produktivität. Umso schwerer ist es, das aufzuholen, wenn man wie im Osten sehr kleinteilig organisiert ist.
Die ostdeutschen Länder haben sich zuletzt sehr unterschiedlich entwickelt. Brandenburg und Mecklenburg-Vorpommern eher gut, Sachsen und Thüringen im Mittelfeld, Sachsen-Anhalt eher schlecht. Ist es sinnvoll, Ostdeutschland noch als einen Block mit den gleichen Probleme anzusehen?
Man muss total stark differenzieren innerhalb Ostdeutschlands. Die gemeinsame Vergangenheit war in der DDR. Die ganzen Transformationseffekte sind irgendwann in den Neunzigerjahren ausgelaufen. Seitdem setzen sich normale Standortfaktoren durch. Man muss in die Regionen, nicht auf die Länder schauen. Wir haben alleine aus demographischen Gründen einzelne Regionen, wo die erwerbsfähige Bevölkerung bis 2035 um die 30 Prozent sinken wird. Damit kriegen sie keine positive Entwicklung mehr. Die ostdeutschen Zentren, die werden auch künftig zulegen. Da wächst die Bevölkerung, da geht die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung dann positiv weiter.
Wenn man mit Ostdeutschen spricht, haben viele immer noch die Idee, dass die ostdeutschen Länder an 100 Prozent Westniveau herankommen können. Hat die Politik das Ziel falsch gesetzt, was zu enttäuschten Erwartungen führt?
Ich weiß nicht, ob die Politik dieses Ziel wirklich noch verfolgt. Man macht ja nichts Spezielles mehr für den Osten. Die Förderpolitik ist gesamtdeutsch. Die Subventionen, die da gewährt werden für die Chiphersteller Intel oder TSMC, die fließen zufällig in den Osten, weil die Unternehmen ganz gezielt Standorte hier ausgewählt haben. In der Produktivität oder im BIP-je-Einwohner sind die 100 Prozent kein echtes Ziel mehr. Nun wird immer noch gesagt, bei den Löhnen, da will man schon 100 Prozent erreichen. Da gibt es aber Schwierigkeiten. Die Löhne, die Tarifregeln sind faktisch angeglichen. Relativ viele Unternehmen zahlen aber nicht nach Tarif. Dann sind eben die effektiven Verdienste deutlich geringer.
Ist es ein positiver Standortfaktor, dass in Ostdeutschland die Tarifbindung niedriger ist als in Westdeutschland?
Ich würde es nicht als einen Standortvorteil ansehen, der dazu führt, dass hier mehr Unternehmen zuwandern. Die Unternehmen, die aus dem Westen hierher kommen, bezahlen alle nach Tarif, mit ein paar Ausnahmen vom Anfang der Neunzigerjahre. Aber für die ganz vielen kleinen Unternehmen, die hier sind, für die ist die Freiheit, nicht tarifgebunden sein zu können, ein positiver Wettbewerbsfaktor. Sie haben dann eine Kostenentlastung, entweder bei den direkten Lohnkosten oder bei den ganzen sonstigen Regeln, die mit Tarifverträgen verbunden sind, und die ja auch Kosten verursachen. Diese Unternehmen werden sich nicht in die Tarifverträge hineinzwingen lassen. Das tun sie im Westen ja auch nicht alle. Die Löhne werden sich erhöhen am Markt, wenn die Arbeitskräfte knapp werden. Ob man dann bei 100 Prozent landet oder nicht, das kann man heute nicht vorhersagen.
Some East Germans see the fact that wealth is very unequally distributed between West and East as a major disadvantage.
It is increasingly being said that it is an injustice. Some people are coming up with the idea of basic inheritance or I don’t know what else. But the distribution of wealth is just like that for historical reasons. You won’t be able to change it even with a basic inheritance of 20,000 euros. You will probably have to accept that the inequality will exist forever.
It is of course positive at first because more added value is generated at the locations and higher-paying jobs are created. But the spillover effects into the region are not that great. It is limited to a narrow radius of perhaps 30 kilometers. These large settlements therefore do not bring much for overall economic development. They have a one-off effect, the level of added value is raised, and then growth continues more or less as before. It must also be seen that it is not super high-tech jobs that are being created, but very often technician or master craftsman level, electricians, mechatronics engineers and others. A large proportion of these workers are actually being poached by other companies because Intel or TSMC pay better and because not many people will move there. This means that jobs are lost at the locations elsewhere. This problem is only slowly becoming part of public awareness.
Don’t you have any hope that the settlements will create something like a concentration and a self-sustaining local upswing?
If you look at the large settlements, you don’t see that clusters are being created. Tesla in Brandenburg is like a UFO. They have their global networks. The battery factory here didn’t work out and we haven’t heard anything about the Tesla research center in Berlin. The Chinese battery manufacturer Catl in Erfurt is also quiet. The semiconductor cluster in Dresden is working quite well, but it’s been working here for 20 years. It’s a no-brainer. The foundations were actually laid with Siemens, now Infineon. Then came AMD, now Global Foundries, then came Bosch, then they have X-Fab and NXP Semiconductors, which have been very successful recently. That’s why TSMC is now joining in.
TSMC is coming because it is getting five billion euros from the federal government.
You can say that. But they could have gone to Grenoble. I am very sceptical as to whether this idea of building up a European semiconductor production facility with selective subsidies is a good idea. It doesn’t really solve the supply chain problem. But the semiconductor story in Dresden is certainly a success story. It is in fact the only semiconductor location in Europe that can somehow keep up on a global scale. Intel also wanted to go to Dresden, but there was no sufficiently large plot of land. Now they are going to Magdeburg; from an American perspective, 200 kilometers from Dresden is not far. They will join the Dresden cluster. But I am sceptical as to whether much else will be built around it in Magdeburg, in terms of research facilities and the like. In principle, this can be served from Dresden.
It used to be said that large companies were needed for the East to catch up in terms of labor productivity. Is that still true?
It’s not that easy. There are also small companies that are highly productive. What is definitely true is that larger companies are more productive on average because they can take advantage of economies of scale. But I am skeptical that there will be many more large-scale settlements in eastern Germany. And it is also very important that the economic structure is balanced. It is better not to just rely on large companies, but to achieve diversification in terms of industry and size. As far as the economy as a whole is concerned, I hope that the shortage of labor will at some point force companies to be more productive. That means everything that has to do with rationalization and digitization, and possibly also with increased structural change. That is where the greatest economic effect in the future will come from, not from these new settlements.
What does this mean for funding policy?
The main instrument is regional funding, which all companies in the manufacturing and service sectors can receive, with preference given to smaller companies. I think it makes sense to do it this way, to give smaller companies a little more support, but otherwise not to include a large selection of sectors, but to spread it as widely as possible. That is the core of regional funding, which also applies to the East. What federal policy is now doing, however, is to increasingly support certain strategic areas with a highly selective character. I think that is wrong per se. It is no longer regional funding, it just happens to flow to the East.
In many ways, this is frustration with the traffic light government in Berlin. I don’t see any current economic difficulties popping up now. The AfD’s strength is actually widespread. It has been solidifying for ten years. The AfD is very strong in Thuringia and Saxony and in the south of Brandenburg. Some of these are structurally weak regions, but some are not. They cannot justify it with acute economic crises. We have analyzed whether the strength of the AfD is related to the level of income in a region. It turns out that it is not necessarily an actual disadvantage of the region where the AfD is gaining ground. In terms of income, it is more a perceived disadvantage and concern about losing the previous status.
So it is a misjudgment of one’s own living conditions that makes people vote for AfD or BSW?
Yes, in part. I only looked at income, other factors could also play a role. Maybe they have problems with daycare provision, but I can’t imagine that. Maybe they have problems with higher unemployment. But that’s not a big issue anymore. The federal government’s equality report shows that the regions where people are predominantly pessimistic about the future or feel worse off, even though objectively they aren’t, have a higher proportion of BSW or AfD voters.
Can subsidies and regional financial aid prevent the strengthening of the political fringes?
There is an argument that the AfD is strong in places where there has been a lot of emigration, where the elites have more or less thinned out and those who have remained have had no chance elsewhere or were not mobile enough. The fear of loss is particularly high there. It is similar to Donald Trump’s voters in the USA, in the Midwest, where the disadvantaged tend to live. If they now pour more money into these regions in eastern Germany, which does not reach the people, it will not change anything. After all, people would have to immigrate to change things. But immigrants often avoid these regions, foreign ones of course, and some Germans also do not want to go there. In the short term, pouring money into them is actually of no use at all.
Is the strengthening of the political fringes a locational disadvantage for East Germany?
The entrepreneurs who come from outside have a long-term perspective. If in doubt, they will say, AfD, BSW, that’s going to die out. If I’m involved here for 25 years, the political majorities will change from time to time anyway. In that respect, it probably doesn’t matter. In addition, a variety of different location factors are important for companies. The political fringes are perhaps one factor among many, but they may not play such a big role in the long term.
So political extremism is not a deterrent?
I see an indirect effect. If companies want to go to the East, they need workers that are not available here. So they have to come from abroad or from other regions. If companies suspect that they will not get workers because no one is moving to places where the right-wing fringe is strong, then you are actually having a negative impact. There are regions like the Görlitz district, the Bautzen district, and Saxon Switzerland. It will be more difficult for them to get investors because the right-wing is relatively strong there and xenophobia is relatively high. This does not play a major role for Dresden, and certainly not for Leipzig, not for Jena, and probably not for the Berlin area either. But in the peripheral regions in particular it can ultimately have a negative effect.
What happens to the companies already established here?
If they need workers and want to recruit them through immigration, they may also have a problem. It is striking that it is always the same, larger companies that speak out against the AfD because they absolutely need workers from abroad. But there are many small and craft companies, or entrepreneurs, where support for right-wing parties is just as high as in the general population. Right-wing influences are also seeping into companies in unexpected ways. I have spoken to roofing companies here who said that they do not employ Syrians because their customers do not want Syrians on their roofs.
Do you see positive economic policy proposals in the AfD and BSW programs?
It always says something like cutting red tape, which would be positive. I think the AfD wants to cap the minimum wage at 12 euros. The BSW wants 15 euros. The minimum wage is problematic, 12 euros would probably be better. But I read their election manifestos twice. It’s a hodgepodge of things, some of which are contradictory, and most of it didn’t make sense. The BSW seemed totally left-wing to me when it came to social policy, and totally right-wing when it came to immigration. The AfD said cuts in social welfare, but at the same time they want to somehow improve social benefits for Germans. That is to say, with the exception of this cut in red tape, I can’t think of anything that I would say is probably a good thing. But all the other parties say cuts in red tape too.
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