FDP on the economy

The FDP wants to continue and expand the state's founder stipend. At least 1,000 founders a year are to keep receiving support. The state's start-up policy as a whole is meant to grow and become more visible internationally.

The FDP wants to help people who start a company. The state gives them money and advice. At least 1,000 people should get this help every year. The FDP wants to make this help even bigger.

The platform points to almost three thousand stipend recipients so far and wants to carry this funding forward. Universities are to play a growing role as incubators in their regions; the excellence start-up centers at universities are named. The DigitalHubs are meant to foster exchange between founders and mid-sized companies. The FDP wants to encourage start-ups in the skilled trades with the Meistergründerprämie (a bonus for master craftspeople who found a business).

The FDP wants to introduce young people to entrepreneurship earlier and make it easier to found a company from age 16. New companies should pay no chamber fees in their first two years. Social entrepreneurship is also to be strengthened.

The FDP wants young people to start companies more easily. This should be simpler from age 16. New companies should pay no chamber fee for 2 years. Chambers are groups that companies must be members of.

According to the platform, other countries are ahead when it comes to companies founded by people under 25. Students should therefore come into contact with entrepreneurship early, for example through initiatives such as StartUp Teens and student companies. The FDP rejects any obligation to belong to several chambers at once. For social entrepreneurship, specialized training in start-up counseling is to be expanded and networking among founders supported.

The FDP wants better conditions for private backers such as business angels and venture capital funds. This is meant to give start-ups financing beyond public channels in their founding and growth phases. They should also find it easier to take part in public tenders.

Young companies need money to grow. The FDP wants more private investors to put money into them. The state should become more attractive for such investors. Young companies should also get public contracts more easily.

The platform notes that venture capital investment has more than doubled since 2017 but considers this insufficient. The state is to become more attractive to such investors internationally as well. It names the Scale-Up Programm.NRW and the stepped-up activities of NRW-Bank under the NRW.Venture brand. Cooperation between public bodies and start-ups is to be improved in general.

The FDP wants private and public spending on research and development to reach 3.5 percent of economic output by 2030. To get there, the state's innovation strategy is to be implemented. Alongside this, the platform calls for a fiscal policy that keeps tax burdens low and lowers them where possible.

The FDP wants more money for research. By 2030, the state and companies together should spend 3.5 percent of economic output on it. The state has a plan for this. The FDP wants to carry out that plan. Taxes should stay as low as possible.

The target comes from the state's new innovation strategy, whose measures the FDP wants to carry out. The platform names digitalization, sustainability and climate protection, resilience and innovative business models as fields of action. The party wants North Rhine-Westphalia to become an innovation leader and to rank among the top locations for investment. The platform sees low taxes for people and businesses as a condition for companies to drive innovation and for new firms to settle in the state.

The FDP wants to keep North Rhine-Westphalia an industrial hub and make its industry climate-friendly. It relies on better framework conditions, less red tape, faster permits and equal support for all new technologies. Companies are to shape the transition on their own.

The FDP wants industry in the state to stay strong. Industry should also become climate-friendly. The state should simplify rules and approve projects faster. It should not favor any one technology. Companies should find the best way themselves.

The basis is the state's industrial policy mission statement, covering topics such as digital infrastructure, research funding, the investment climate and land development. A transformation dialogue with chambers, associations and unions is meant to accompany the change and raise public acceptance of industry. The party wants the structural change in the Rhenish lignite region to become the most successful in Europe. A reliable, competitive energy supply and more skilled workers are also part of the plan. Because business is to carry most of the investment itself, the FDP wants to strengthen the Fin.Connect.NRW financial center initiative, which brings companies and investors together.

The FDP wants to strengthen the automotive and supplier industry during its structural change and secure jobs. It backs battery-electric drives, hydrogen drives and synthetic fuels alike.

The car industry is changing a lot. The FDP wants to help it. It wants to support electric cars. It also wants to support hydrogen and man-made fuels. This should keep good jobs in the state.

The platform sees North Rhine-Westphalia as a potential winner of the change because of growing production of electric drives. The state is meant to be a pioneer for battery-electric mobility. At the same time, the party stresses that synthetic fuels can often already be used in conventional combustion engines without retrofitting. The goal is a lastingly successful mobility industry with high-quality jobs.

The FDP wants to advocate at the federal and EU level for open markets and a rules-based trading order, including with difficult partners. At the same time, the state is to expand its international location marketing and attract more investors.

Companies in the state sell a lot abroad. So the FDP wants free trade with clear rules. This also applies to difficult partner countries. The state should promote itself more abroad. Then more companies should invest here.

Through the agency NRW.Global Business, location promotion and marketing are to grow and the international network is to be widened. The advantages of the greater region with Belgium and the Netherlands are to feature more strongly. Recruiting and looking after investors is to focus on topics such as digitalization, climate protection, the energy transition and start-ups. Trade is to be based on reciprocity.

The FDP wants to continue the red-tape reduction of the previous deregulation packages and create a cap on bureaucracy. The core is a mandatory one-in, one-out principle: when a rule is added, an outdated one must be removed. EU requirements are to be transposed one-to-one only.

The FDP wants less red tape. Red tape means many rules and forms. For each new rule, an old rule should go. The state should not make EU rules stricter. Laws should be easier to understand.

A best-practice principle is to oblige the state government to follow the simplest and most effective solutions found in other states. Legal texts are to be uniform and citizen-friendly so that public services can be digitized more easily, including with artificial intelligence. Bricklayers, carpenters and metalworkers are to receive a limited right to submit building plans in order to speed up construction. Occupational safety rules are to be geared more closely to business practice. At the federal level, the FDP supports a moratorium on new burdens, higher limits on supplementary earnings and simpler documentation duties.

The FDP wants to slim down the state development plan considerably and leave more decisions to regions and municipalities. In its view the plan still contains too many restrictions, especially for commercial and industrial land. A land pool is meant to make investment easier.

A state plan sets where building is allowed. The FDP thinks the plan has too many small rules. It wants to remove many of them. Cities and regions should decide more themselves. This should create more land for companies.

The party criticizes that the prescribed calculation of land demand does not allow supply-oriented planning. It also says the requirement to adjoin existing settlements does not fit large industrial sites. An investment-friendly land pool is to be usable according to need. On nature, species and open-space protection, the FDP wants to give regions more leeway because requirements differ across the state. It intends to propose changes to the federal spatial planning act.

The FDP wants to support small and mid-sized firms, the skilled trades and the liberal professions by funding digitalization and reducing red tape. In its view the state should confine itself to setting framework conditions instead of steering in detail.

Small and mid-sized companies matter for the state. The FDP wants to help them become more digital. There is a funding program for this. It should grow. Local offices should work in a uniform and simple way.

The funding program Mittelstand Innovativ & Digital is to be continued and enlarged. The Innovationsdialog Handwerk NRW is meant to accompany the skilled trades on technology, digitalization, sustainability and securing skilled workers. The FDP wants to avoid differing inspection and permit practices among municipalities through uniform requirements, which can first be tested in real-world labs. The liberal professions are to be relieved of red tape, with professional rules that make innovation easier. For tourism the party relies on future concepts and digital infrastructure, and business successions are meant to succeed.

The FDP wants to allow more Sunday openings as far as the constitution permits. Municipalities should be able to designate one shopping Sunday every month. This is meant to strengthen brick-and-mortar stores against online retail, which is available around the clock.

Online shops are always open. Shops in town are not. So the FDP wants more open Sundays. Each town should be allowed to pick one Sunday a month for this.

On these Sundays, municipalities should find it easier to hold events downtown, provide extra public transit capacity and designate additional parking. Beyond that, the FDP wants to make urban planning and administrative requirements for retail more flexible and less bureaucratic. Retailers are to get support in combining in-store and digital sales channels.

The FDP wants to make North Rhine-Westphalia a leading location for innovation. Within five years, at least 50 pieces of research-based intellectual property are to become companies. To that end, future technologies are to be funded, new professorships created and legal obstacles removed.

The FDP wants more new ideas and new technology in the state. Research should lead to new companies. There should be at least 50 in five years. There should be more professors for future technologies. Rules that slow things down should go.

Knowledge transfer between research institutions and companies is to be strengthened. Funding is planned for technologies in areas such as digital transformation, mobility, energy conversion and biotechnology. Additional professorships are planned for fields including artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0, quantum technology, blockchain and cybersecurity. The FDP also wants to advance the bioeconomy through research and biorefineries and to deliberately take the lead in genetic engineering research.

The FDP wants to avoid new bureaucratic burdens and to put time limits on existing obligations, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, or review them regularly. Laws, bans and rules that are not necessary should be dropped.

The FDP wants less red tape. Red tape means many rules, forms and reports. Rules that are not needed should go. Small firms in particular should have to report and record less.

Reporting and statistics duties should be cut sharply, and documentation duties reviewed regularly. The platform calls for a one-in-one-out principle, under which an old rule is dropped for every new one. Public employees should receive bonuses for proposals to reduce bureaucracy. Under a one-stop-shop principle, one contact person should coordinate between agencies. EU and federal requirements should be implemented at most one to one.

The FDP wants tighter limits on commercial activities by municipalities. A municipality should be allowed to engage in business only if no private company can provide the service better and more economically.

Cities should run businesses less often. They should only do so if private companies cannot do it better. The FDP says some cities lost a lot of money this way. Taxpayers then bear the loss.

The platform points to risky investments such as the municipal purchase of the energy company Steag, which it says led to debt rather than profits. Municipal business law is to be amended accordingly. Before acquisitions, council members are to receive an additional summary report from an independent body. Members of supervisory boards of companies with municipal stakes are to provide proof of expertise.