German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has invited senior steel industry representatives, workers’ councils and trade unions to a summit on the future of the industry in the Chancellery in Berlin on Monday.
Scholz wrote on the X platform that it was about concrete measures to secure the steel industry in Germany, adding that ensuring reliable electricity prices, encouraging investment and protecting against dumping were important in this regard.
Scholz told the newspapers of the German Funke media group: “Steel will remain part of our industry for centuries to come, and it is now important to secure the steel industry in Germany in the long term. This is of geostrategic importance.”
In November, Germany’s largest steel company, ThyssenKrupp, announced that the number of jobs in its steel sector would decrease by 11,000 within six years.
Of the current 27,000 jobs, 16,000 will remain. Workers’ representatives and the IG Metall union are threatening long-term resistance in light of the planned job cuts at ThyssenKrupp’s steel division. Scholz expressed his concerns about the plans, telling the German newspaper Neue Westfühl: “Since the transition period we have learned that companies in the arms industry often rely on suppliers from countries from which we cannot always be sure whether we will get the materials we need at any given time,” stressing that one should not be subject to blackmail.
