Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck can imagine pausing the German supply chain law for two years. Two years is how long the member states have to implement the EU supply chain law passed in May. “I think that is absolutely justifiable,” said Habeck on Friday at the Family Business Day in Berlin. He was not more specific. “I ask for two or three weeks of patience,” said the minister. Many companies complain about what they see as excessive bureaucracy in Germany and Europe, and this includes the supply chain law.
Natalie Mekelburger, shareholder and chairwoman of the managing directors of the Coroplast Group from Wuppertal, is one of the many who are complaining. It is simply not possible for her company to provide proof of origin and “our ability to influence things is limited,” says Mekelburger. Her family business, with around 7,000 employees and a turnover of 750 million euros, produces cables and adhesive tape, among other things, primarily for the automotive industry. There are better ways than the supply chain law. Coroplast has been active in China for many years. When the company started there, there were no social standards there. Many German companies were the first to introduce them there, including Coroplast. “We became role models.” Many Chinese companies have adopted the standards.
Mekelburger knows that there were misconducts in textile companies in Asia that also produced for German manufacturers, child labor, inadequate fire protection and much more. “But you can’t hold the European economies liable for this,” says Mekelburger. There is also the risk of liability with the EU supply chains. “Non-governmental organizations are just waiting to sue the companies,” says the family business owner. She uses another example to illustrate how difficult it is for companies like Coroplast to document the supply chain. Coroplast’s cables also contain copper from mines in South America and China, and they are at the very beginning of a long supply chain. According to the EU Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which is part of the EU Green Deal, Coroplast must, for example, document biodiversity in mining regions. “That doesn’t achieve anything and frustrates our employees, who want to improve our sustainability and not document it,” says Mekelburger. “It is crazy to believe that we can improve the world through measures such as the Supply Chain Act or the Green Deal.” Such interventions endanger prosperity.
“Failure to provide assistance to Germany as a business location.”
Mekelburger speaks for her company, Ulrich Stoll, as chairman of the Family Business and Politics Foundation, speaks for many. He too is struggling with the “bureaucratic stress” in Europe, the tax burden, the shortage of skilled workers; none of the complaints are new. In Germany, there is a need for a renaissance of a growth-oriented economic policy, says Stoll, who is a shareholder in the mechanical engineering company Festo. If the traffic light coalition misses the opportunity to change course, it will have to live with a serious accusation: “That of failing to help Germany as a business location.”