Head of State Chancellery Florian Herrmann has severely criticized Green-Red’s decision to make fewer public spaces available to exhibitors at the IAA Motor Show. The Free State now wants to offer alternatives.
The head of the Bavarian State Chancellery, Florian Herrmann (CSU), has sharply criticized the city for its handling of the IAA motor show. “For a cosmopolitan city, the red-green decision in the Munich city council is small-minded, hostile to innovation and therefore more than regrettable,” he said on Thursday. The city council decided on Wednesday to reduce the exhibition space for a new edition of the fair next year. With this, the green-red city government wants to react to the criticism from the citizens of the dimensions of the so-called open spaces, especially at the Mercedes stand in front of the Feldherrnhalle on Odeonsplatz. A “consumption-free place” is to be created there. In addition, the net exhibition area at Königsplatz is to be reduced by 2,000 square meters.
State Chancellor Herrmann announced that the Free State would now examine which areas it could still make available to exhibitors – for example the Hofgarten. He sees the IAA as a “key event” for Bavaria as an industrial and mobility location. The Munich first edition last year was a “great success”, “the decentralized and modern concept inspired people from all over the world”. If red-green city councilors now said that the organizer could return to Frankfurt if something didn’t suit him, it was “very strange”. The leaders of the Greens and SPD in the town hall, Dominik Krause and Anne Hübner, see no violation of the contracts that the city has concluded with the organizers in the decision made on Wednesday. Hübner had declared in the city council that she hoped that an agreement would be reached. If the change means that the IAA no longer wants to, “then you just have to go to Frankfurt”.
Herrmann said he expects the city to “reconsider compromises.” The aim is to bind the IAA to Munich and Bavaria in the long term. “Bavaria is car country.” The managing director of the Association of the German Automobile Industry, Jürgen Mindel, was irritated by the decision on Wednesday. The fact that “the concept of the application is unilaterally withdrawn in parts surprises us and is difficult to understand”. The consequences of this decision will now be examined. Mindel left open whether the trade fair should remain in Munich.