Manuel Hagel, the CDU’s lead candidate in Baden‑Württemberg, has called for longer working hours and a later retirement age. In an interview with “Handelsblatt” he noted that Germans work roughly 200 hours less than Swiss workers and urged the creation of incentives for “extra work” such as overtime that is exempt from income tax and social‑security contributions. He also stressed the need for a pension reform, saying that rising life expectancy will eventually require people to remain in the workforce until 70 or beyond.
Hagel accused the SPD-Baden‑Württemberg’s coalition partner at the federal level-of damaging the economy. He described the SPD’s proposal to raise inheritance tax as “poison for the business environment”. He said that any reform of the inheritance tax could only succeed through a “regionalisation” of the tax rate, allowing each German state to set its own rate. This, he argued, would help protect the interests of the country’s small and medium‑sized enterprises (SMEs) and stimulate competitive federalism among the states.
Amid a sustained economic downturn, Hagel sees the core of Germany’s economy as under threat. Four weeks before the state election he warned, “We are witnessing a slow deindustrialisation”. He fears that Germany could become the “Detroit of Europe” referencing the decline of the U.S. auto‑manufacturing hub. To shield German industry from the “bargaining prices” of Chinese competition, he calls for political countermeasures, including the possibility of new European tariffs.
