Inflation, Agenda 2010 or gas prices – the German Economic Advisory Council has shaped Germany for 60 years. Even if politicians don’t always listen to economists.
Herbert Giersch once said that nothing more than a receipt from the porter was returned. When the founding chairman of the Council of Experts sent the first report “to assess overall economic development” together with his four co-assessors to the Bonn Chancellery, there was only silence afterwards. Neither politics had accepted anything of what the economists had suggested, nor had industry. She was hired for exactly that job. They should bring more economy into politics, be uncomfortable. When former Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard suggested to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the panel of experts should be set up, Adenauer is said to have said: “Mr. Erhard, do you want to put a louse in your fur?” Apparently yes, because on August 14, 1963 the Advisory Council for the Assessment of Overall Economic Development was founded, which to this day presents its assessment of the economic situation in Germany every autumn.