SPD on the economy

The SPD wants to create a transformation fund to financially support the restructuring of Hesse's economy. According to the program, this is meant to keep Hesse a strong location for industry and services with secure jobs and good wages.

The SPD wants a new pot of money for the economy. It is called the transformation fund. The money should help companies change. This should keep jobs in Hesse safe. Private investors should be able to join in.

The fund would pay for regional transformation clusters, future technologies and their industrial rollout, training and investments in location factors, among other things. It would also allow equity stakes in small and mid-sized companies that make their business model sustainable. Private capital could be included. A transformation council would bring all parties together and later become a transformation agency modeled on Rhineland-Palatinate. The SPD also plans a "Zukunftsbündnis Wirtschaft Hessen" (future alliance) of companies, unions, politics and science.

The SPD wants to review the state's business subsidy system and reorganize it around social, innovative and sustainable criteria. The program describes current practice as confusing and inefficient. It adds subsidy guides, an active policy to attract companies and support for resource efficiency.

The SPD wants to check the support programs for companies. Then the state should reorganize them. Social goals and green goals should matter. Subsidy guides should advise companies. The state should bring new companies to Hesse.

Subsidy tools would be checked for whether they fit the economic transformation, and the program says no existing program is guaranteed to stay. Mid-sized firms would get help adjusting to the European Green Deal. Subsidy guides would advise and train works councils, employees and management. The policy to attract companies would focus on future technologies and include faster permits, designated land and investment support. A special program would help small and mid-sized companies adopt more resource-efficient production methods.

The SPD wants to put new businesses and business successions at the center of its economic policy. By the end of the legislative term, founding a startup should be possible within 48 hours. Women founders would get targeted support.

The SPD wants to make it easier to start a company. A new company should be fully set up in 48 hours. Taking over an existing business should also get easier. Women should get special help when they start a company.

Support tools for startups and successions should be low on paperwork, easy to access and technically simple. The program argues that founders create future jobs and that successions secure employment in mid-sized business. It notes that only about one in seven startups in the EU is founded by a woman and that women founders receive less venture capital. Regional advice centers for women founders would therefore be strengthened.

The SPD wants to develop a statewide industrial strategy and make a three-way industry dialogue with employer associations and unions the guiding principle of its economic policy. Regional transformation networks would get lasting support. The auto industry and its suppliers would receive help with their restructuring.

The SPD wants a plan for industry in all of Hesse. The state should talk with employers and unions about it. Regional networks should get lasting help from the state. The car industry should get support as it changes.

Existing approaches, which the program calls rudimentary, would first be evaluated. In the SPD's view, the transformation should be shaped from the bottom up in the regions; where networks are missing, the state would push for their creation. For the auto, pharmaceutical and chemical industries and the social economy, there would be an in-depth structural analysis following the example of Thuringia and Rhineland-Palatinate. Support for the auto sector would be closely coordinated with employees and their union.

Under the label "Hessentempo" (Hesse speed), the SPD wants to accelerate planning and permitting procedures. The program sees faster modernization of infrastructure and industrial plants as key to prosperity and to preserving natural resources.

The SPD wants planning and permits to go faster. It calls this Hesse speed. Offices and courts should get more skilled staff. Applications to the state should become digital. Building projects should be finished sooner.

Public offices and courts would get enough skilled staff, and government application processes would be digitized. The plan includes standardized reviews, lean administrative procedures and deemed approvals, where an application counts as approved once a deadline passes. For infrastructure projects, the SPD wants to work with the federal government to use every option for speeding things up.

The SPD wants to fund projects that keep local shops open or help new ones start. The program treats lively town centers as essential to a livable state. Support would go mainly to sustainability-oriented offerings, local economic cycles and owner-run businesses.

The SPD wants to keep town centers lively. There should be money for local shops. Small owner-run shops should get help. Cooperatives in villages and neighborhoods should get help too. A cooperative is a business owned jointly by its members.

According to the program, town centers need good conditions for retail, restaurants, culture and time spent in public spaces. The support includes local cooperatives and initiatives that secure shopping and services in villages and city neighborhoods. The state would launch such projects itself and back them financially.

The SPD wants to make the state's co-funding of Hesse's tourism regions permanent and firmly anchored. Responsibilities for tourism would be pooled. The goal is higher-quality tourism in rural areas.

The SPD wants to strengthen tourism in Hesse. The state should keep helping to pay for vacation regions. There should be one fixed contact point for tourism. Tourism in the countryside especially should get better.

The SPD sees tourism not only as economic policy but also as a way of shaping the places people live. The sector would get a single point of contact. Besides recreation, the focus would be on health, food, regional identity and a sense of home.

The SPD wants to expand links between research, companies and start-ups. To that end, Hesse is to get its own transfer agency modeled on the planned federal agency DATI. Companies are also to receive advice on EU funding.

Research should reach everyday use faster. The SPD wants a new office in Hesse for this. It should support networks in the regions. Companies should get advice on money from the EU. A visitor center for space travel should be built in Darmstadt.

Hessian research regions are to get help when applying for funding from the Deutsche Agentur für Transfer und Innovation (DATI, German Agency for Transfer and Innovation). The Hessian counterpart is to support regional networks. An advisory structure for EU funds, as other states have, is meant to boost innovation and jobs. The SPD also backs building a visitor and conference center at the ESA's space operations center ESOC in Darmstadt to raise the profile of Hesse's space sector and spark interest in the sciences.