Main motion of the CDU Saar – Because it can be done better. Bringing the Saarland economically forward again. Because it can be done better. Bringing the Saarland economically forward again. Main motion of the CDU Saar adopted at the state committee in Quierschied on 18.06.2026. The economic strength of the Saarland determines whether our state will remain an attractive place to live, work, and do business in the future. However, at the moment the Saarland is stuck in a deep structural economic crisis. It has developed significantly weaker in the long term than other federal states: • In terms of economic growth, the Saarland has ranked last among all federal states for several years. Since 2010, the Saarland's economy has grown to only one-sixth of the national average. • Employment trends are persistently significantly worse than the national average; especially in manufacturing and trade, the Saarland is experiencing a significant decline in employment, while gains are seen only in public service and related sectors. • With a negative net balance of business start-ups in recent years, the number of liquidations exceeds the number of new business foundations. According to the Chamber of Commerce (IHK), this is a trend “that points to a gradual erosion of the business stock.” • Up to 5,000 jobs are at risk in the Saarland in the coming years if business successions fail, warns HTW Saar. Since 2012, the SPD has continuously held both the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Labor. In the current legislative period, structural change is allegedly given special priority even in the State Chancellery. Those who have controlled the central levers of the state’s labor market and economic policy for more than a decade bear significant responsibility for the results. And these results clearly show: The Saarland is falling even further behind. It is already clear today: At the end of this legislative period, the Saarland will be significantly worse off in key economic policy areas than at its beginning. The Rehlinger government governs our state below its value. We as CDU Saar want to do better: Some things that used to work well no longer do. We must draw the right conclusions from this. We must build on the strengths we have and consistently leverage our potential. The Saarland has reinvented itself repeatedly: Saarland 1.0 was shaped by coal and steel. Saarland 2.0 marked the departure from mining and development into a region for automotive and steel industries. Now we need Saarland 3.0: A digitalized, highly modern innovation region. For us, the principle is: Innovation before subsidies. Public funds should not permanently maintain structures artificially but rather trigger private investments, accelerate transfer, and enable new value creation. Our principle is: Politics should not dictate how companies work. Politics must create the best possible framework conditions for the economy to thrive. This is the core task to which we strategically align ourselves. We will not wait until after the election to tackle the following proposals: Wherever possible, we will already push them forward politically and parliamentealy now. At the same time, they form an important basis for our government program, which we will implement consistently when in government after the election. More trust and faster procedures are real location advantages An attractive and modern economic location is decided less by individual funding programs than by framework conditions such as speed, reliability, and clear responsibilities. Too many bureaucratic regulations follow the principle of mistrust before responsibility. For us as CDU Saar, the state is a partner of businesses and citizens, not their opponent. We will therefore resolve the “innovation brakes” of bureaucracy, including the following measures: • Saarland Efficiency Act: Reporting, documentation, and retention obligations must be systematically limited in duration, reviewed, and reduced. The burden of justification must be reversed: It shall no longer be necessary to explain the reduction of bureaucracy but rather the continuation of such obligations. For this purpose, we will present an efficiency act under which existing obligations will expire on December 31, 2027, unless their retention is expressly regulated by law. • Municipal Deregulation Act: We will implement the demand of the Saarland Association of Cities and Municipalities for a municipal deregulation act. This will enable municipalities, counties, and special-purpose associations to apply for exemptions from state law regulations that were enacted for fulfilling the tasks of municipalities, counties, and lower administrative authorities. This will allow new forms of task fulfillment or task relinquishment to be tested in individual cases over a certain period. Successful tests can then potentially be implemented statewide and permanently. • Approval by Fiction as the Default: If authorities do not decide within prescribed deadlines, an application in standardized procedures will be deemed approved. Where no complex balancing decisions or third-party rights exist, we intend to implement this. In suitable cases, the approval by fiction will be combined with a completeness fiction to ensure deadlines start to run clearly and bindingly. • No Over-fulfillment of EU Requirements: EU and federal law must not be unnecessarily over-fulfilled in the Saarland. Deviations must be especially justified in the future. Existing “gold plating” (excessive requirements) will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis and abolished where possible. • Consistent Digital and Practical Checks: Every new law and funding program must be digital-ready, practical, and time-limited. Programs that fail to meet goals must not continue silently. Additionally, we want to introduce a digitalization department with veto power in the cabinet: For important IT and digitization decisions within the state administration, this department should have binding co-determination. Modeled after the federal government, there will be a veto right if key digital projects are insufficiently coordinated, technically unfeasible, or strategically wrong. This ensures that digitization is not an afterthought but considered from the start in all important decisions. • Reform Tarif Loyalty Act and Make It Less Bureaucratic: The goal of the Saar tariff loyalty law is to strengthen collective bargaining in the Saarland. However, the latest evaluation shows this goal has not yet been achieved. Instead, there are significant data gaps, and bureaucracy for businesses has increased. Fair wages and high collective bargaining coverage are right goals for which we as CDU stand. But these are not achieved through state control and blocking bureaucracy but primarily through strong social partners and practical framework conditions. It is therefore counterproductive that since May 1, 2026, the scope of the law for the construction industry has been significantly expanded without addressing enforcement deficits, data gaps, and bureaucratic hurdles. Simply increasing staff at the supervisory authority is, in our view, the wrong approach. It only fuels the impression that the SPD wants to put all companies under general suspicion. We do not need a growing control apparatus but practical enforcement, preferably with spot checks and sanctions for proven violations. A social market economy does not need mistrust bureaucracy – it needs trust in companies and reliable frameworks. We will continue to fight for this as CDU Saar. Future industries: Expand excellence, link research and companies more closely Saarland has strong to excellent scientific and technological foundations. However, this strength must be translated into value creation faster and more efficiently. We want to link research, start-ups, SMEs, and established industry even more closely, including with the following measures: • Pool strengths through cluster formation: Besides cybersecurity and AI, the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector offers great opportunities for the Saarland. Therefore, our aim must be to link the scientific strength of our state more closely with regional industry and SMEs to develop new projects and funding consortia and to support start-ups and SMEs specifically. A stronger focus on concrete commercialization projects is needed to transfer research into industrial application more quickly. • Trustworthy AI as Saarland's location profile: Artificial Intelligence is one of the most important future technologies today. It now depends on how we use AI opportunities in the Saarland without losing sight of the risks. We want to remain an industrial location and set new accents. Our goal is to establish the Saarland as a model region for trustworthy AI – a region where innovation, security, and European values go hand in hand. Trustworthy AI is the key term: Only if technologies are reliable, transparent, and data protection compliant will people’s trust grow and acceptance increase. Cybersecurity gains new significance in connection with AI, and cyber defense is increasingly a sovereign task. • Think in circles: Worldwide linear supply chains with cheap raw materials for our industry and export goods are increasingly a thing of the past. Therefore, we must think technologically consistently in circular systems and develop new technologies and business models for successful circular product design with recyclable high-performance materials. The Saarland has excellent conditions in key technologies such as informatics, materials, and biotech for the circular economy. “Circular Saar” is a competence center under development linking scientific expertise with industrial experience. This initiative is a starting point but must become faster, larger, and more application-oriented to yield economic impact and make the circular economy a central innovation and transfer project in the Saarland. • Understand space and defense as future industries: The whole world is undergoing an epochal change. This also creates economic opportunities for technologically strong regions. Dual-use technologies connect space and defense. The Saarland contributes industrial competence, high-precision manufacturing, excellent research in informatics, AI, cybersecurity, materials science, and biomedicine, as well as a powerful SME sector. Our goal is to bundle these strengths in research and the economy more strongly. Our focus is not on large systems but on areas where the Saarland has realistic strengths: secure software, AI applications, sensors, materials, precision manufacturing, cyber defense, and dual-use transfer. Family businesses, crafts, and SMEs at the center Saar-SPD’s economic policy long focused too narrowly on individual large industrial settlements. The failures of Ford, Wolfspeed, or SVolt have shown how fragile such a strategy is. The Rehlinger government is probably the least successful state government in Saarland's history. The settlement of Ve-tier is a bright spot but does not replace a reliable, systematic settlement strategy. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy has initiated several small-scale funding programs and discussion groups for SMEs but mostly with a PR character. A viable overall strategy is still not visible. We as CDU Saar know: The backbone of the Saarland economy is SMEs, crafts, family-run companies, and industrial suppliers. Therefore, we stand for a real turnaround towards stronger SME orientation in Saarland economic policy, including the following measures: • More success control in the SME promotion law: We will fundamentally revise the SME promotion law last amended under SPD leadership in 2016. It is crucial to move from a patchwork of vague declarations of intent to more binding, systematic management with measurable goals and concrete instruments, responsibilities, and minimum standards. This includes that the regular SME report provided for in the law must in future clearly evaluate whether the individual programs and measures of the state government actually achieve their goals, such as regarding jobs or leverage effects of funding. • Strengthen SME clearing office: We advocate that every SME-relevant legislative proposal is actually submitted to the clearing office established for this, which is currently barely visible. The clearing office should regularly submit a bureaucracy report to the state parliament, which forms the basis for further debureaucratization. Here too, we rely on more binding commitments instead of vague declarations of intent. • Promote business successions specifically: Retaining existing businesses is more effective than hoping for new ones. Up to 5,000 jobs are at risk in the Saarland in the coming years if business successions fail. This was found by an HTW Saar study that also offers concrete courses of action. We need a succession program in the Saarland that makes purchase prices affordable and supports successors as best as possible during this phase. This also includes protection of existing approvals for at least two years after business takeovers. New, additional requirements for fire protection, accessibility, or energy efficiency must not deter new business owners. We also want to cushion additional burdens arising from company succession involving real estate, such as property transfer tax. Strategic land and location policy – no more hits by chance, but system Success in land and location policy requires clear economic alignment, available and prepared land, and professional support for companies throughout the process. By-chance successes cannot conceal the fact that the Rehlinger government does not pursue a sustainable strategy. We as CDU Saar will address this need and set a special focus with, among others, the following measures: • Critically review entrenched structures: Characteristic for SPD economic policy is the tendency to create a new agency, advisory board, or strategy for every new issue or problem instead of strengthening existing structures and making them efficient. This mainly increases administrative overhead while the economy shrinks. We will stop this wrong path: We will critically review all network structures and other measures and reduce them to an effective core. In this context, we also call for an independent, unsparing evaluation of the Strukturholding Saar, especially in settlement management as well as land and real estate management. We need an open analysis on whether existing structures, processes, and decision paths have actually led to sustainable location development or whether more efficient alternatives exist. • Statewide land overview and immediate action capability: The state development plan must not become a state prevention plan. When the IHK warns that the economic development of our state is massively endangered by the current draft of the Rehlinger government because it provides too little industry and commercial land, we must take countermeasures decisively. We need developed, parceled, and preferably pre-approved industrial and commercial land in Saarland that companies can use at short notice. All available land, its technical characteristics, and development status must be bundled and digitally visible in real time in one place. The current structures in land and sales management must be reformed accordingly so that development to a real “One-Stop-Shop” from first contact to successful investment completion becomes possible. Skilled labor acquisition: more appreciation, stronger vocational training, manage immigration We must understand education, training, immigration into the labor market, and labor market policy more strongly as location policy in the Saarland. Therefore, we as CDU Saar especially advocate designing vocational education attractively with a future-proof system to reach all young people again, sustainably solve growing fit problems in the training market, and make vocational training and continuing education a flagship of Germany in the future. We need binding career orientation in schools, more practical days, closer cooperation between schools and companies, and a statewide strategy against training dropouts. To secure the demand for skilled workers, we pursue the following measures among others: • Strengthen dual training: We as CDU Saar stand for retaining and sustainably strengthening vocational schools in their entire offer structure with graduation possibilities from lower secondary school to Bachelor Professional. Vocational education needs adequate framework conditions for good teaching design, starting with good staffing of teachers. • Free master craftsman training: As a contribution to equality of vocational and academic education, we advocate financial support for corresponding advanced training with the Saarland advancement bonus (“master bonus”). Our goal remains free master craftsman training in the Saarland. • Get international skilled workers into jobs faster: In migration policy, we stand for a clear separation between asylum and labor migration. For this purpose, we need a central contact point in Saarbrücken specifically for international skilled workers. There, the relevant responsibilities are to be bundled to accelerate recognition and approval procedures, especially the recognition of foreign professional qualifications. Against this background, it will be examined whether the “work-and-stay agency” agreed upon in the federal coalition agreement will be introduced as a model project in Saarbrücken. Culture and creative industries as economic factor We stand for a paradigm shift in cultural policy: Culture must no longer be considered primarily as a subsidy sector. Properly understood, it is a central location factor, an economic factor, and an instrument of modern state development. It strengthens social cohesion and identity, increases visibility externally, attracts visitors, revitalizes inner cities, hotels, gastronomy, and retail, and can mobilize private engagement and additional funding. Official figures prove the importance of this sector: According to the IHK, the culture and creative industries sector in the Saarland counts over 2,200 companies and more than 15,000 employees. However, its share of total economic turnover in the Saarland is well below the national average. If the Saarland reached this average, the added value of the sector would be several hundred million euros higher annually than currently. Therefore, we as CDU Saar have the courage to think bigger: Out of mere administration of what exists into cultural policy that recognizes potentials, seizes opportunities, and resolutely implements projects, including international ones. We advocate the following measures, among others: • Recognize and realize potentials: We as CDU Saar want cultural policy that enables beacons, involves private funds, systematically considers economic returns, and links culture, tourism, economy, education, and urban development more strongly. This includes projects that attract attention beyond the Saarland, draw a broad audience, and generate significant tourist added value. Such undertakings can also pay off economically for the Saarland through admission revenues, additional overnight stays, gastronomy and retail sales, and regional purchasing power. To realize this potential, a reliable, professional framework is needed. • Creative industries as future sector: Digital media and creative industries are no longer niche topics. They belong to the most dynamic future sectors and combine culture, technology, education, design, music, film, storytelling, and economic innovation. We therefore want to establish digital media, games, and creative industries as an independent focus of Saarland cultural and economic policy. This requires reliable game funding in the Saarland that does not only support individual projects but explicitly enables growth. This also applies to all other branches of the creative industries. Our goal is a Saarland that does not lose but attracts creative minds. • Make all actors visible – on a common basis: Who is not visible is politically rarely considered. Therefore, we want systematically to record the culture and creative industries in the Saarland and resume official KKW monitoring. The basis is a broad concept of culture based on the UNESCO Cultural Declaration of 1982 as a binding steering foundation. A complete mapping creates transparency, shows economic potential, and makes clear where funding, networking, and location policy must specifically target. • Prioritize new Saarlandhalle: For years, the Saarland has lacked a modern event hall, as the existing Saarlandhalle is no longer sufficient for modern large-scale productions. As a result, the entire state is losing appeal as a cultural location and simultaneously forsakes measurable added value. Therefore, planning to implement a new event hall as a replacement for the Saarlandhalle must be urgently accelerated. This project is of statewide and supraregional significance. Therefore, the state government must take significantly more initiative in planning, implementation, and financing. Recognize special challenges, seize opportunities The Saarland is a unique federal state in its historical development. Our state is shaped by decades of structural change, a difficult financial situation, municipal old debts, and a long-standing economic decline. Precisely for this reason, the Saarland needs a state government that forcefully puts these special challenges on the federal political agenda and pushes through concrete solutions in Berlin, but also better uses the special opportunities of our location in the heart of Europe. The Rehlinger government falls short here. Instead of consistently using the Saarland’s federal political role for constructive negotiations and reliable results, its appearances often exhaust themselves in PR appointments and public criticism of its own coalition partner at the federal level. This does not solve Saarland problems. We as CDU Saar stand for a different path. We fight for the federal government to give stronger consideration to the special role of the Saarland in the current structural change. Just as we took responsibility and fought for our state’s interests in the 2016 reorganization of federal-state finances, we will also now advocate strongly for Saarland with clear proposals, reliability, and negotiation strength. The standard is also the constitutional goal of equivalent living conditions throughout Germany. This promise must not apply only on paper for the Saarland. Among other measures, we pursue the following: • “Saarland Agenda” for federal politics: With our own “Saarland Agenda,” we will bundle the central demands of our state to the federal government: for successful structural change, sound state and municipal finances, fair conditions for industry and SMEs, and genuine future perspectives for the people of the Saarland. • Use the economy in the tri-border region consistently: Saarland economic policy must increasingly see itself as the core of a trinational economic region with Luxembourg and France and align itself accordingly. The advantages of proximity to the booming economic region are not yet exploited consistently enough. We see great opportunities especially in infrastructure, mobility, as well as in AI, space, and defense. Of outstanding importance is a fast direct rail connection between the Saarland and Luxembourg. From our close contacts with the CSV, the leading government party in Luxembourg, we know: There is great openness on the Luxembourg side for closer cooperation. We must use this chance politically, economically, and infrastructurally consistently. This is what we as CDU Saar stand for.
Focus on innovation, reduction of bureaucracy, and new future industries
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