Germany’s new Federal Minister of Transport Patrick Schnieder: ‘make the change visible quickly’
Reimann first wanted to know where the newly appointed minister got his nickname ‘Eifel Tower’ – not to be confused with the Paris landmark and its double ‘f’. The good-humoured minister revealed that a local newspaper from his home region, the Eifel in Rhineland-Palatinate, had given him this name – as a tongue-in-cheek reference to his height of over two metres.
Schnieder also wants to position himself as a ‘rock in the surf’ politically: He wants to show transport and logistics companies within the next two or three months that his policies are ‘moving in the right direction.’ The goal is to ‘make the change visible quickly.’ In doing so, he does not want to favour any mode of transport or neglect rural regions – ‘not only in my home region, the Eifel.’
A key concern for the minister is to speed up construction and planning procedures, for example for road and railway bridges in need of renovation: ‘It cannot be that for a new bridge, which is to be built in the same design and in the same location as the old one, the planning process has to start from scratch every time.’
Finally, Reimann turned to Deutsche Bahn – ‘the transport company in Germany that we all use to gauge the state of the country.’ What are Schnieder's next steps here? ‘It's a very complex system,’ he said. ‘I don't think much of replacing the staff and announcing: Now everything will be fine.’ Instead, he wants to take stock first: ‘What should the railway look like in five or ten years? What should it achieve – for customers, for the state, for the logistics industry?’ Only then will the question arise as to whether and how to intervene in the structure of committees, supervisory boards or executive boards. ‘Personnel matters are therefore at the very bottom of the list.’ (bo)
