BERLIN (dpa-AFX) - When it comes to the sustainable restructuring of the auto industry, the German government faces several problems: It must create the conditions for companies to produce enough electric cars and for people to buy them. At the same time, development and production should remain in the country as far as possible, and jobs should be preserved. The federal government wants to develop solutions together with the industry and has therefore set up a "Strategy Platform Transformation Automotive and Mobility Industry". Ahead of the top-level meeting in the Chancellor's Office this Tuesday, it is already drawing criticism.

This is because it is primarily the automotive industry that will be represented at the meeting: The heads of the Mercedes, VW and BMW car companies, Ola Källenius, Oliver Blume and Oliver Zipse, for example, are expected to attend. Lower Saxony's Minister President Stephan Weil (SPD), an important VW shareholder, is also expected to attend. Representatives of suppliers and IG Metall head Jörg Hofmann have also been invited. Who is missing from the point of view of critics: players in the transport sector outside the automotive industry.

The fact that the title of the platform refers to the entire mobility economy is therefore "label fraud", said on Monday Dirk Flege, CEO of the interest group Allianz pro Schiene.

The cyclists' club ADFC, the Federal Association Future Bicycle and the Two-Wheeler Industry Association expressed similar views. "Where it says mobility economy on it, there must also be mobility economy in it," said Wasilis von Rauch, managing director of Zukunft Fahrrad. The associations called on Scholz to make the transport turnaround a top priority.

The construction industry would also have liked to come. The construction of infrastructure, for example in the high-performance rail network, is "the basis for the mobility turnaround, and we are building this turnaround," the chief executive of the German Construction Industry Association, Tim-Oliver Müller, announced on Monday. "That's why I can't understand why construction is not playing a role at the Chancellor's mobility summit."

Instead, the meeting on Tuesday is likely to be about the ramp-up of electromobility in Germany, among other things. Accordingly, the relevant associations lined up with their demands beforehand. "Anyone who wants a rapid switch to e-mobility must not cut the subsidies for battery-electric vehicles at the moment," the president of the German Association of Motor Trades and Repairs, Jürgen Karpinski, announced, for example. "We need reliable subsidy conditions in the long term and an accelerated expansion of the charging infrastructure, otherwise customer confidence will suffer."

The German Biofuels Industry Association (VDB), in turn, warned against neglecting combustion engines powered by biofuels. "Abandoning biofuels would thwart the goal of quickly driving down the consumption of fossil energy in road transport," informed association managing director Elmar Baumann./maa/DP/stw