Where does the Mittelstand stand?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Could Germany benefit from drastic Javier Milei-style reforms?
One business owner in Berlin thinks so, and many others want a reduction in the amount of bureaucracy bosses are responsible for.
As a federal election takes place in Germany, members of the Mittelstand, Germany’s famous small and medium-sized businesses known as the “backbone” of the country's economy, tell Business Daily what a new government could do for them.
Theo Leggett travels to a science and research park on the outskirts of Berlin where the boss of an underwater robot company and other tech businesses are based. There's a lot of innovation happening in the buildings, but confidence in politics is low.
And Anouk Millet looks at the Hamburg businesses trying to modernise and forge a path towards an uncertain future.
If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]
Presenter: Theo Leggett Producer: Hannah Bewley Reporter: Anouk Millet
(Image: Fabian Bannasch, CEO of Evologics,holding a robotic "penguin". Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily. I'm Theo Leggett. In this program, we're in Germany, |
| 0:07.8 | and as elections loom this Sunday, we'll be looking at the small and medium-sized businesses |
| 0:12.5 | that make up the backbone of the country's economy. We'll be hearing from firms in Hamburg and Berlin |
| 0:18.2 | and asking about the challenges they're facing now. Of course, regulation |
| 0:22.4 | when it comes to artificial intelligence, when it comes to sensor technologies, when it comes to |
| 0:28.5 | data handling, large-scale data handling and so on. There's just lots of different obstacles. |
| 0:33.7 | We'll also be hearing about their concerns for the future and asking what do they want and need from the next government. |
| 0:40.1 | For an industry to thrive, you need reliability. |
| 0:43.5 | And what we've seen in the last years is uncertainty. |
| 0:47.2 | So, yeah, I'm a bit concerned. |
| 1:02.9 | Think of German businesses, and the chances are it's names like Volkswagen, Deutsche Telecom, BASF, Deutsche Bank or Bosch that come to mind. |
| 1:10.5 | These are the German giants, the national champions, the corporate colossi that represent the country on the global stage. |
| 1:14.4 | Yet the vast majority of German firms are not like this at all. |
| 1:20.8 | 99% are small and medium-sized businesses, often family-owned, and with perhaps a few hundred employees. These companies make up the famous Middle Stant, the backbone of the German economy, |
| 1:27.3 | and a major source of employment. |
| 1:29.7 | With elections looming, I wanted to find out how they feel about doing business in Germany today, |
| 1:35.1 | what their hopes and fears are for the future, and what they want to see from the next German government. |
| 1:40.9 | We'll hear from Hamburg later in the programme, but I've come to Berlin and to the huge |
| 1:45.2 | Adlersoff Research Park on the outskirts of the city, which is home to more than a thousand |
| 1:50.0 | small tech-focused businesses. Right now we are in the middle of our robotics prototype |
| 1:59.7 | lab. So this is a large hallway where all of our robotics prototypes are being fabricated by our teams, |
| 2:06.1 | which looks a bit messy. |
... |
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