• Date 03 June 2025
• Location Hamburg Sustainability Conference
  
• Speaker Lars Klingbeil

Ministers,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It’s a great honour and pleasure for me to be here today. When Minister Reem Alabali-Radovan invited me to open the second day of the Hamburg Sustainability Conference, I said “yes” right away. Because I want to promote policies that build bridges to a better future. A fairer future with closer international cooperation, more sustainability and more equality.

Even well-established rules and institutions were unable to prevent war in Europe. Germany has had to learn some drastic lessons in recent years. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, we need to take care of our own security to a much greater extent.

And our export-based economic model has to cope with long-time partners suddenly calling into question the trade relations that have strongly benefitted both sides.

These developments are important reasons why we need to swiftly strengthen our economy. The new German government has and will continue to take strong action. We will take strong action now, because every euro and every bit of political capital we invest today will pay off many times over in the future. To put it the other way around: Inaction today will come at a great cost in the long run.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In the last few years, I’ve made several political visits to countries in the Global South. I’ve been to Namibia, South Africa, Ghana, Mongolia, Chile and Brazil. I know how important it is for us to talk to each other, not about each other. That’s the key to building strong and trusting relationships. Successful cooperation benefits everyone. One important aim of this conference is to promote such helpful personal encounters.

The world is currently undergoing tremendous realignments. The balance of power in the global economy and in international policy cooperation has been slowly shifting for years. For the benefit of the global citizenship, we must re-build multilateral cooperation. Multilateralism is the answer to global challenges.

After all, we have plenty of interests in common: such as fighting climate change, displacement and expulsion, inequality, hunger and poverty among others. A rule-based international order has the best chances of success for the largest number of countries. The Agenda 2030 demonstrates the international community’s joint commitment to achieving these goals. This is the spirit we have to revive.

Most countries still think that stable, rule-bound relations, including fair trade, are important. Most countries value the rule of law, not the rule of might. They support a strong United Nations and joint responsibility for the future of the global community.

That’s why our priority must be to defend the rule-based international order, and also to reform it. Many of our international organisations will need to better reflect the changing global balance of power.

For this, we have to invest much more in new strategic partnerships. And we will also need to listen to what our partners expect from us. These new partnerships will probably be more issue based than in the past. We don’t need to agree on everything to become partners. But only by working together we will find real solutions to these major challenges.

We already have a lot of good initiatives we can build on. I would like to mention a few of them in more detail. 

One of Germany’s priorities is to successfully implement the G20 Compact with Africa. Moving forward, the Compact can and needs to support progress within the African Continental Free Trade Area. Thus, making it possible to combine markets, creating economies of scale that generate decent jobs. This will boost economic development and strengthen the fiscal capacities of African countries.

We in Europe have an interest in an integrated African market. We need to ensure that our trade policies support integration, not make it more difficult, as perhaps has sometimes been the case in the past. 

Second, underscoring our dedication to global partnerships as well as our proactive approach to addressing global challenges, Germany is a leading player in development financing. In absolute terms and given current developments, we are on course to be the world’s biggest contributor of Official Development Assistance.

Germany will stand by its international responsibilities. Especially now, when other major donor countries are reducing their support, Germany will remain a reliable partner.

What we cannot do is compensate bilaterally for the global shortfall in development financing. We call on old and new donor nations to increase their Official Development Assistance to a similar level to ours. We also call on all donors to work better in coordinating this aid. 

Still, non-financial cooperation will be more important than ever in the future, like free and fair trade agreements. In this context, Germany supports the EU’s Global Gateway initiative that fosters the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Third, as finance minister I need to talk briefly about taxation. Germany has long been a strong advocate of international tax cooperation, promoting fair and transparent tax policies that benefit economies worldwide.

For example, we are firmly committed to a global minimum tax. It will help developing countries, because they can generate material tax revenues of their own, which they will then be able to invest back into their economies. 
We also want developing and emerging countries to be actively involved in international tax policy discussions. Thus, we ensure that international tax standards have broad-based support.

These are all important initiatives. But we want to do even better! We want to take our cooperation to the next level.
 
In 1977, the Independent Commission on International Developmental Issues, also known as the North-South Commission, was founded. It was chaired by the former German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In the introduction to the North-South Commission’s final report, which was published in 1980, Brandt wrote: 

“The challenge for the next decades will not be met by an adversary system of winners and losers – North versus South or East versus West – but only by one founded on human solidarity and international cooperation amongst all.”

With his call for a different, more respectful way of working with the Global South, Willy Brandt was far ahead of his time. Almost half a century later, we can still benefit from this inspiration to address global challenges.

I am therefore delighted and proud that, within the new German government, we have agreed to establish a new North-South Commission. We now need to work on the specific details of how the commission will be set up so that it addresses expectations from both the North and the South. I envision independent experts from the areas of politics, civil society, business and research from all parts of the world coming together on a regular basis to search for new answers. I am convinced that we also need to have some younger participants and more women than in the previous North-South Commission. 

The overall goal is to jointly suggest new North-South policies for a multipolar world! 
In these times, I believe that no crisis can be solved without cooperation of the countries of the Global South and the Global North. Therefore, we want to establish a new dialogue based on partnership. By founding a new North-South Commission, we can create a global network that I hope will make a decisive contribution to such a new North-South policy, without doubling or disrupting the good day-to-day-work that current institutions and processes are doing.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The American author Zora Neale Hurston once made the following insightful observation: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” After many years that raised more and more questions, 2025 can be the year of answers.

We all share a common goal: we want to work together to solve the challenges of our time so we can create a better future that leaves no one behind. That’s why we’re here today. Let’s all put our heads together and find answers to the big questions that affect us all. 

Thank you for listening. And thank you for being on this conference.