Linke on the economy

The Left wants to curb the power of large food and retail corporations with tougher antitrust law and break up monopolies. Speculation on food is to be banned. Farmers and consumers are meant to benefit.

A few big supermarket chains have a lot of power. The Left wants to limit that power. Companies that are too big should be split up. Nobody should be allowed to speculate on food. Farmers should get minimum prices where needed.

The platform calls for fair supply relationships and effective antitrust law in the food market. It notes that the Federal Cartel Office has long viewed the chains' buying and market power critically. No single chain should dominate a region, and monopolies are to be dissolved. Price monitors should be able to step in. Where needed, minimum producer prices are to protect farmers. In the party's view, corporations use inflation to raise their profits.

The Left wants to create an independent federal agency that monitors prices and can intervene quickly when key industries raise them sharply. In the energy sector, price increases would need approval.

A new agency should watch prices. It should warn early when prices rise too much. Then the state should be able to step in fast. Energy companies should need permission to raise prices.

The price watchdog would be an independent top-level federal agency and act as an early warning system. Intervention should be possible when corporations in sectors such as energy, housing, food, mobility, health or banking raise prices well beyond their cost increases. Energy suppliers would have to prove that higher procurement costs justify an increase. The platform argues that the previous coalition reacted too late and too weakly to the price surge.

The Left calls for a binding ceiling on the pay of managers and board members. It may be at most twenty times the lowest salary in the company.

Managers should not be able to earn unlimited amounts. The Left wants a fixed limit. A manager may get at most 20 times what the lowest-paid person in the company gets. Bonuses count too.

The limit would apply to managers and executive board members. Bonuses are included in the calculation. The benchmark is the lowest salary in the company concerned, of which no more than twenty times may be paid.

The Left wants to expand the Lieferkettengesetz (Supply Chain Act), which requires companies to respect human rights and environmental standards among their suppliers. Violations would be punished more severely.

Companies buy goods and parts in many countries. A law requires them to respect human rights when they do. The Left wants to make this law stricter. Companies should face tougher penalties if they break it.

The plan includes better options for lawsuits, complaint procedures and more frequent government inspections. The rules cover human rights, occupational health and safety, environmental and climate standards, and child labor. Sanctions would also apply internationally. Raw materials agreements with other countries would be designed so that sustainable value creation develops there.

The Left calls for 200 billion euros for an investment fund that helps companies convert to climate-friendly production. Support is to come as long-term loans or in exchange for company shares. A binding future plan for the economy is to form the basis.

The Left wants 200 billion euros to rebuild industry. The money goes into a fund. Companies get loans from it. Or the state gets shares in the company in return. This should make industry climate-friendly.

Employees are to receive loans from the fund if they want to take over their company and run it as a cooperative, including in insolvency cases where continued operation looks viable. The fund is to reinvest returns from stakes and loans. The federal government is to draw up a future plan with conversion targets and investments together with unions, associations, researchers and companies, tied to job guarantees and collective agreements. The program also aims to convert the arms industry to civilian production, build regional economic cycles and make patents publicly usable. As its overarching goal it names democratic socialism.

The Left wants to grant state aid and subsidies only in return for binding commitments from companies. These include guarantees for employees, collective agreements, commitments to sites and investment plans. Funding is to be repaid if the conditions are broken.

Companies should only get state money in return for firm promises. They must protect jobs and pay union-agreed wages. They must keep their sites. Companies that break the promises pay the money back.

The condition applies to direct payments and indirect subsidies alike. Repayment is planned in cases of layoffs for operational reasons, broken job commitments or ignored environmental standards. Companies based in tax havens are to get no funding. Companies drawing on crisis aid are to be barred from paying dividends. Through public procurement, product standards and quotas, products made in a climate-friendly way under collective agreements are also to get an advantage, for example in steel.

The Left wants the federal government to buy stakes in important companies through industrial foundations and other forms of public ownership. This is meant to steer the climate-friendly conversion better and protect critical infrastructure from being sold off.

The federal government should buy shares in important companies. Industrial foundations should be set up for this. This lets the state steer the rebuilding of the economy. Important sites like ports or pipelines should not be sold.

The stakes are to come on top of the investment fund and be paid for by the federal government. As infrastructure worth protecting, the program lists refineries, pipelines, energy storage and ports, which should go neither to authoritarian states nor to private corporations. Public companies are to drive industrial renewal and involve private firms through cooperation.

The Left wants to give works councils co-determination on economic matters. Workforces are to confirm major decisions and be able to veto relocations, closures and mass layoffs. In regions undergoing structural change, transformation councils are to help shape the conversion.

Workers should have more say in companies. Big decisions need the workers' approval. Workers should be able to stop closures and mass layoffs. In affected regions, councils should help decide on the changes.

The veto is also to apply to outsourcing and investments in the future. European works councils are to be strengthened so that sites of international corporations cannot be played off against each other. Collective employee ownership and employee-owned companies are to be promoted; the program cites studies saying more democratically run firms make more social and ecological decisions. The economic and transformation councils are to control money from the Climate and Transformation Fund. States, municipalities, companies, unions, works councils, employees and environmental and social associations are to have equal votes in them.

The Left wants to keep auto industry sites and jobs and convert the companies into mobility manufacturers that produce more for buses and rail. Plants the corporations want to give up are to be socialized. Electric mobility is to advance through public procurement, quotas and charging infrastructure.

The Left wants to keep jobs in the car industry. The companies should build more buses and trains. If a company wants to close a plant, the plant should become public property. The state should only buy electric cars. There should be more charging stations.

Public bodies are to buy only fully electric vehicles as a rule, starting immediately. At EU level, the Left seeks electric car quotas for commercial fleets. For tradespeople, care services and rural commuters, income-based subsidies for small electric vehicles are planned, and only vehicles built largely in the EU are to be subsidized. Added to this are investments in public charging points with low rates and requirements for gas stations, retailers and employers. When taken-over plants are converted, workforces are to be involved and collective agreements secured; the money comes from the industry fund. The program considers e-fuels and hydrogen impractical for private transport.

The Left calls for a federal fund that municipalities and states can use to bring privatized companies back into public ownership and run them on a nonprofit basis. Municipalities should carry out their tasks themselves instead of handing them to private providers.

Towns sold many companies in the past. The Left wants to bring them back. The federal government should give money for this. These companies should not work for profit.

The fund would be financed with federal money and be open to municipalities and states. Local energy suppliers and municipal housing companies should not have to make profits to plug budget gaps. So-called smart city technology should not remain a business model for large corporations but be put in citizens' hands.

The Left wants to accompany structural change in eastern Germany with investment plans, especially in regions with an auto industry. Workers would be protected through transitional employment companies and guaranteed incomes.

The economy in the East is changing. The Left wants investment plans for this change. New jobs should come from building trains. Workers should keep a secure income.

New jobs are to be created in building and maintaining rail vehicles. Economic and social councils would build on the eastern German tradition of round tables. Cooperatives, employee buyouts and municipal enterprises would be supported, among other things through an investment fund for industry. A solidarity-based training levy is meant to strengthen companies that train apprentices, especially small and mid-sized firms in rural areas.