Germany creates ‘super–high-tech ministry’ for research, technology, and aerospace

From ScienceMag:

Germany will get a new “super–high-tech ministry” responsible for research, technology, and aerospace, according to the coalition agreement published by the incoming government this week.

The announcement is one of several nods to science in the 144-page agreement, unveiled on 9 April following weeks of negotiations between the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and its sister party, the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU)—who together won the most seats in February’s federal elections—and the center-left Social Democrats. The agreement is expected to be formally approved by the three parties by early May, paving the way for CDU leader Friedrich Merz to be elected chancellor.

Under the plans, the current Ministry of Research and Education will be split. A new ministry for research, technology, and aerospace will be formed, and the education portfolio will be taken over by the current ministry for family, seniors, women, and youth. It is the first time in 3 decades that German research and technology will be under the same ministry, with research separate from education.

That’s a positive move, says Georg Schütte, CEO of the Volkswagen Foundation, the largest independent research funder in Germany. “I’m quite happy there’s a realignment,” he says. “Things are coming together that belong together.” Technology and aerospace, until now governed by the economics ministry, are intertwined with research, he says, and the division between science and education better reflects how responsibilities are divided at the European Union’s ministers’ council, which negotiates and adopts EU laws and budgets.

The agreement stipulates that the CSU will be in charge of the “super–high-tech ministry,” as party leader Markus Söder called it in a press conference this week. The CSU has not proposed a minister yet, but it’s widely expected that Dorothee Bär, who was in charge of “digital infrastructure” in previous governments under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, will get the nod.

The new agreement lists a number of scientific priorities for the new government, including support for artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, biotechnology, microchip development and production, and fusion energy. “Our goal is that the world’s first fusion reactor should be realized in Germany,” the text states. It also mentions personalized medicine, oceans research, and sustainability research as “strategic” areas. But the agreement does not include any budget estimates, and observers caution it is unclear where the money for new programs would come from. The agreement does affirm current commitments to increase the budgets of the country’s main research organizations by 3% per year through 2030.

In a section titled “scientific freedom,” the document seems to refer at least obliquely to developments in the United States, where scientists working on topics such as gender, global health, and climate change have seen their funding slashed and important data sets have been scrubbed from the websites of federal agencies. “Funding decisions will be based on science-driven criteria,” the document states. “It seems like that should be a no-brainer, but we have seen how quickly it can change,” says Eva Winkler, an oncologist and medical ethicist at Heidelberg University and a member of the German Ethics Council. The parties also state they “want to safeguard scientifically relevant data sets whose existence is threatened and keep them accessible worldwide.”

Germany could benefit from the political upheaval in the U.S. and elsewhere, the document suggests. The government plans to launch a program called 1000 Minds, to attract international talent and “maintain Germany as an attractive destination” during an era of polarization. The parties have not provided details, but Winkler says she hopes the program will “make it easier to recruit the best international people.” Current practices can make international hires especially complicated, she says.

The parties also gave a nod to science’s role in building up Germany’s military and defense capabilities, Schütte notes. The new government plans to expand peace and conflict research and will “enable more targeted cooperation” between researchers at public institutions, companies, and the military to work on security and defense research. This has long been a sensitive topic in Germany, where many universities have adopted a pledge not to work on military or dual-use research. Those pledges have quietly been dropped in many places, Schütte says. Germany needs a new alignment of defense policy and research policy, but “we do not yet know how to do this,” he says. “We have to come to grips with it.”

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