German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised Saturday to boost new technologies, particularly in the auto industry, in a bid to resolve the economic crisis if she wins re-election in two weeks.
“The job for a new government is to overcome the financial and economic crisis quickly and intelligently,” Merkel told the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, stressing the need to defend jobs and ensure the recovery of the credit market.
“We will apply ourselves energetically to projects for the future as we have already done in various fields over the past four years,” she added.
“I want Germany to remain an innovative country, creative and self-confident,” she said, referring to her government’s efforts in protecting the environment, promoting renewable energy and improving medical techniques.
Merkel’s conservative Christian Union bloc is still flying high in opinion polls and she is expected to be able to form a coalition with her favoured partner, the business-friendly Free Democrats.
Much hinges on her television debate Sunday with her main rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier of the leftist Social Democrats, her current coalition partner.
In her weekly speech on the Internet, Merkel also said Germany must play a leading role in the design of the motor vehicle of the future, recalling that her government wanted to see a million electric cars on German roads within a decade.
“It’s ambitious, but it’s also vital because work is going on all over the world to find alternative propulsion technologies,” she said.
Merkel scored a personal success on Thursday when US car giant General Motors agreed to sell a majority stake in its German subsidiary Opel to a Canadian-Russian consortium as Berlin had favoured.
Half of Opel’s 50,000 jobs are in Germany, and in a boost for Merkel’s chances of winning a second term in the elections on September 27, Opel’s new owners have pledged to keep open its four main plants in the country.
In her interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung Merkel denied wanting to save Opel at all costs for electoral purposes by offering 4.5 billion dollars in state aid if its preferred sell-off went through.
The European Commission warned Friday that such incentives must not favour German factories at the expense of plants in other EU countries, but Merkel expressed confidence that Brussels would give its approval.
Although Opel factories in Germany would remain open, according to the weekly Der Spiegel some 4,100 job cuts are planned at the various plants out of a total workforce of 25,000.
Factories in Belgium, Britain, Spain and Poland could be under threat.
Merkel told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the left-right coalition with the Social Democrats had managed to reduce unemployment and public debt, and avoid an economic crash.
“But with the Free Democrats it will be even better,” she said.
