German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was criticized this Thursday, including within the governing coalition, for a project to partially sell the port of Hamburg to the Chinese group Cosco.
It was the statements of support from NDR and WDR by Scholz, himself a former mayor of Hamburg, for this controversial project that sparked the criticism.
According to these media, the chancellery planned to approve the alienation, despite opposition from six of the federal ministries, namely Economy, Interior, Defense, Transport and Foreign Affairs.
The item under discussion is the conclusion of an agreement concluded one year ago between the operator of the Port of Hamburg (HHLA) and the shipowner Cosco for the acquisition of a 35% interest in the latter in the operation of the container terminal Tollerort ( CTT).
If the government does not oppose the operation by the end of October, the decision could go ahead.
The intelligence and counterintelligence services also expressed their reservations about the sale of infrastructure considered critical, according to the WDR and NRD.
Despite these objections and reservations, Scholz urged “to let the operation go ahead in spite of everything,” according to the press.
The Port of Hamburg is the first commercial port in Germany and the third in Europe, after Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Antwerp in Belgium. Cosco is the first Chinese shipowner.
Omid Nouripour, a co-leader of the Greens, one of the partners in the governing coalition, along with the Liberals, said on the t-online portal: “This is not good for our economy, nor for our security.” He also warned of the possibility of “repeating a mistake” already made with the Russian Federation, which had acquired German gas reservoirs.
The head of German diplomacy, also an ecologist, Annalena Baerbock, had already warned against such a project, as had Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck, another ecologist.
For his part, the vice president of the liberals of the FDP, Johannes Vogel, said that China “would have an influence in all the major European ports and could turn them against each other,” in a message on the social network Twitter, rebroadcast by Secretary of the Treasury Christian Lindner.
The same tone can be seen in the ranks of the opposition. “The chancellor’s intention to give China significant leverage over this infrastructure, through the (Chinese) joint-stock company Cosco, would be a strategic mistake,” Christian Democrat Norbert Rottgen, who is responsible for international relations at the United Nations, also tweeted. CDU leads.
Source: DN
