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The debate on this question is not new, but is now gaining steam again in light of the formation of a new federal government and international turmoil: What has Germany's development cooperation so far actually achieved and should it not serve many more national interests in the future? Funding cuts, integration into foreign policy and the dissolution of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) have so far been among the proposals, put forward primarily by the FDP and most recently by the AfD and rejected so far by Social Democrats and the Greens. There are no independent development aid ministries in other EU states.

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In January, Friedrich Merz, CDU leader and future Federal Chancellor, also fuelled the discussion. Development cooperation must in future be “an integral part of a foreign policy guided by German interests,” he said in a keynote speech on foreign policy at the Körber Foundation in Berlin. This included preventing illegal migration and curbing corruption and terrorism. Financial aid will only be available if there is constructive cooperation. With around 96 billion euros, the European Union was the largest donor of global development aid in 2023, with Germany paying the lion's share of 34 billion euros. After the EU, the USA was the second-largest donor in the world with around 61 billion euros. However, US President Donald Trump has just stopped funding the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides by far the most funding for American development aid.

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Hamburg-based entrepreneur Stefan Liebing and economist Andreas Freytag, professor at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, are now introducing further proposals for the reorganisation of foreign and development policy into the debate. They are calling on the future German government to take greater account of the interests of the German economy in its foreign policy and to significantly modernise foreign trade policy. Without a modern foreign trade policy, the German economy will not be able to recover. There must be better support for projects abroad that are of strategic interest to Germany. More support should also be given to projects for small and medium-sized enterprises, and companies should be enabled to export, for example through pre-financing or market development programmes. The political flanking of projects in difficult countries with democratic deficits is particularly important, also because the economic development of a country is often a driver of the rule of law and democracy.

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According to Liebing and Freytag, foreign trade activities absolutely need to be better coordinated in the future. In future, the BMZ departments involved in economic cooperation should be bundled in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, such a foreign trade agency should work closely with the Federal Foreign Office in order to be able to make greater use of the German embassies as hubs of German business networks abroad. A Minister of State for Foreign Trade Affairs should act as coordinator. Development cooperation funds must be increasingly used to promote German foreign investments, particularly in infrastructure investments in developing countries, which had a potentially positive effect on local people. gd

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