BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a broadside from a powerful industry federation on Tuesday , adding to the woes of her coalition government already mired in crisis.
He pointed to last month's European elections, which saw the two traditional mass parties punished by voters and the rise of environmentalist Greens, who doubled their share from the last EU polls to just over 20 per cent. While the BDI boss repeated longstanding calls for tax cuts to increase German competitiveness, he said"companies are waiting for answers" especially on climate policy.Successive Merkel governments have struggled to balance a planned withdrawal from nuclear power by 2022 with winding down the use of fossil fuels like coal and building up a new electricity infrastructure.
But Germany's leader did not shrink from firing a salvo of her own back at the car industry as she followed Kempf at the podium.