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Hesse Minister President Koch Holding Political, Economic Talks in Washington

Minister President of the Federal State of Hesse Roland Koch is in Washington, D.C., for talks on economic and political issues with administration officials and on Capitol Hill.

During his three-day stay (September 18-20) in the U.S. capital, Minister President Koch is meeting with, among others, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, Deputy National Security Advisor J.D. Crouch, as well as with Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator John McCain.

Koch, a member of the Executive Committee of the Christian Democratic Party, offered a pragmatic assessment of the Grand Coalition’s progress after one year in government and of its prospects for achieving more reforms in the future.

“At the moment, I am satisfied with the successes we had and the efforts we made,” Koch said to journalists at the German Embassy on Tuesday. “This is not all that I as a Christian Democrat was hoping for, but it is what we were able to achieve.”

The coalition’s approach of defining goals—reducing public debt, improving employment, stabilizing the growth rate—that are achievable, not promising revolutionary change, has led to real results, Koch said. The planned increased in the VAT has spurred consumer consumption now; timing on tax credits has given companies an incentive to build now; and corporate tax reform set for 2008 will make German companies more competitive internationally.

On the labor market, Koch said he was “still very optimistic” about the chances for reducing unemployment below the threshold of 4 million by the middle of 2007, but he said that major legislative reforms would likely be difficult to achieve by coalition partners in the remaining three years of this government.

Hesse and Wisconsin – 30 years of partnership
Minister President Koch began his visit to the United States on September 15 in Wisconsin, to mark 30 years of partnership between the states of Hesse and Wisconsin.

Governor Doyle called Hesse “our best friend in the world,” and thanked Minister President Koch for bringing a new “drive” into the relationship.

Minister President Koch said he looks forward to a partnership over the next 30 years in which contacts between people are the central focus. “On the basis of common values and traditions, the partnership between Hesse and Wisconsin is a success, and we want to work even harder to develop the friendship further,” Minister President Koch said in Madison.

GM – important employer
From Wisconsin, Koch traveled on to Detroit, where he met with GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner and GM Europe President Carl-Peter Forster. GM recently opened the European Design Center at its Opel facility in Rüsselsheim. In the meeting, Minister President Koch underscored the importance to his state of the Rüsselsheim facility and its many jobs and also pointed out the extensive cooperation between Hesse and Opel, according to the state chancellery.

The Federal State of Hesse is one of Germany’s—and in fact Europe’s—strongest and most dynamic economic regions. Hesse is one of Europe’s largest economies, comparable in size to Denmark and larger than Greece, Finland, Ireland, or Portugal. Frankfurt, Hesse’s largest city, is most well known as an international banking hub and as the seat of the European Central Bank.

Minister President Koch is a member of the Executive Committee of the Christian Democratic Party of Germany (CDU).

September 19, 2006

Government & Politics