The leader of the Young Liberals in the FDP, Franziska Brandmann, has categorically called on the federal government and her own party to stop the planned involvement of the Chinese company Cosco in a terminal in the port of Hamburg.
The fact that the Chinese company “Cosco” wants to take a stake in the port of Hamburg has been heavily criticized. The leader of the Young Liberals in the FDP, Franziska Brandmann, has asked the government to stop the planned participation. Anything else is also a pity for the FDP. “It has become painfully clear that the grand coalition has acted too naively in its dealings with Russia and has thus made Germany dependent on energy policy,” she told the editorial network Germany (RND). This “security policy naivety” must come to an end with the traffic light government.
According to Brandmann, China’s head of state Xi Jinping is a dictator who sees himself not as a partner but as an opponent of the West. “It would therefore not only be naïve, but downright negligent not to intervene if a Chinese state-owned company wants to get involved in a Hamburg port terminal. We call on all relevant actors, all members of the federal government and in particular the cabinet members of the FDP to prevent entry.” If the federal government ignores the warnings, this would damage “not only its credibility, but also the credibility of the Free Democrats”.
The parliamentary director of the Greens parliamentary group, Irene Mihalic, told the RND: “We still think that Cosco’s participation in parts of the Port of Hamburg is wrong.” But unfortunately there is no consensus on this. She added: “The proposal to limit Cosco’s stake to 24.9 percent is damage limitation at best.”
She emphasized: “It remains important that we need a cross-departmental China strategy. We must prevent China’s growing influence on our economy and infrastructure from going unnoticed. It is imperative that we safeguard our security interests vis-à-vis China.”