Interview with Harald Christ: “People expect that investments will finally be made”
Reading time: 6 min.
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- At the request of Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, Harald Christ will take over the chairmanship of a new Investment and Innovation Advisory Board.
- The advisory board is intended to support Klingbeil in spending 500 billion euros from the new special fund wisely.
- Christ warns against nagging and emphasizes that people expect that investments will finally be made and that improvements will become noticeable.
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Entrepreneur Harald Christ was once a member of the SPD, then the FDP. Now he's supposed to advise the finance minister on how to distribute €500 billion as wisely as possible. So, where should it go?
Interview by Bastian Brinkmann and Claus Hulverscheidt , Berlin
To describe Harald Christ as a business and political consultant would probably be the understatement of the century. The 53-year-old is more of a jack of all trades, a world traveler between business and politics, with a phone book containing the numbers of virtually every leader in this country. Christ, who grew up in humble beginnings, left the SPD in 2019 after almost 32 years because, in his view, the party had drifted too far to the left. He switched to the FDP, only to turn his back on it again at the end of 2024 in protest against the party leadership's plans to abandon the traffic light coalition. The entrepreneur and former banker, who is also strongly committed to social issues, is now taking over the chairmanship of a seven-member "Investment and Innovation Advisory Board" at the request of Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD). The board's task, put simply, is to support Klingbeil in spending €500 billion from the newly created special fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality as wisely as possible.
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