According to a media report, German companies should not pass on the “security risks of their business models” to society, says Reinhard Bütikofer, head of the EU Parliament’s China delegation.
The chairman of the China delegation of the EU Parliament, Reinhard Bütikofer (Greens), brings higher legal hurdles for billions of German companies to invest in China. “Politicians must clearly tell the economy that they cannot pass on the business, economic and security policy risks of their business models to society,” Bütikofer told the newspaper World in the Thursday edition according to the preliminary report. Companies should not act at the expense of the general public.
He demanded that the economic and political risks of investments in China must be made transparent and that the costs should be incurred where they are caused, as in a free-market environmental policy.
The background to this is the increasing direct investment by large German companies in China. In the first half of 2022, these investments had already reached a record value of ten billion euros. The chemical group BASF had also announced plans to invest ten billion euros in a plant in Zhanjiang, southern China, by the end of this decade.
But these investments are also exposed to political risks, such as a sudden policy change by the authoritarian Chinese government or international sanctions following a Beijing attack on Taiwan.
Bütikofer said Worldthat companies like VW, which are considered systemically important in Germany, could leave the bill for lost billions on the taxpayer’s desk. One must therefore think about various instruments, such as insurance against defaults, certain requirements in the balance sheets or higher hurdles for state guarantees for investments in China.