After six ministries objected to Chinese participation in the port of Hamburg, Chancellor Scholz prevailed with a compromise: instead of the Chinese state shipping company Cosco having a say, it should be a slimmed-down deal.
The federal cabinet has agreed on a compromise in the dispute over Chinese involvement in a container terminal in the port of Hamburg. This was reported from government circles in Berlin. Specifically, it is a so-called partial ban: The participation of the Chinese Cosco group in the container terminal may only be 24.9 percent, previously planned 35 percent.
The compromise is controversial in the traffic light coalition. Under the impression of recent experiences with Russia and the dependence on its gas supplies, a political dispute broke out over the question of whether Chinese participation should be allowed. Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck warned of new dependencies.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs had examined an agreement concluded in September 2021 between the Hamburg port logistics company HHLA and the Chinese terminal operator Cosco Shipping Ports Limited on a 35 percent Chinese stake in the HHLA terminal in Tollerort. Habeck wanted to completely ban Chinese entry. Other ministries wanted this too.
However, according to media reports, the Chancellery urged the entry to take place. If the cabinet had not decided this week, the sale would have been automatically approved as originally agreed between Cosco and HHLA. According to government circles on Tuesday evening, the partial ban is intended to prevent strategic participation and reduce the share to a purely financial participation. Among other things, the acquiring company should be prohibited from being granted contractual veto rights in strategic business or personnel decisions.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is traveling to China at the beginning of November, pointed out that the port was not being sold.
The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz spoke out against the entry of the Chinese state-owned company Cosco in the port of Hamburg and accused Scholz of a serious mistake in this context. “I don’t understand the Chancellor how he can insist on it in such a situation,” Merz said in ARD’s “Morgenmagazin”. “Granting this permission is wrong.”
For him, “the focus is not primarily on financial aspects, but on political and strategic ones,” added Merz. Cosco’s entry is “a very fundamental question from the point of view of the security interests of the Federal Republic”. The Federal Intelligence Service, six specialist ministries of the German government, the EU Commission and friendly governments such as the USA and most experts are against it.
The state-owned Cosco Group also operates the world’s fourth largest container shipping company. Their ships have been calling at the Tollerort terminal for more than 40 years. In return for the stake, Cosco wants to make the terminal a preferred transhipment point in Europe. Shipping company shares in terminals are common in global container logistics. Cosco itself already holds shares in eight terminals in Europe alone.
