The fate of the auto sector has emerged as a prominent and fiercely contested election issue with less than six weeks to go until the vote. The industry is Germany’s biggest exporter and directly employs around 800,000 people.
The scandal over emissions surfaced nearly two years ago when Volkswagen – the world’s second largest automaker – confessed to cheating U.S. emissions tests. The admittance immediately prompted concerns regarding a major source of pollution and has since emboldened those calling for a decisive switch to alternative fuels.
Guntram Wolff, director of the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank, described the relationship between German politicians and auto executives as “very ambiguous.”
“Most people in Germany think that politics is too close to the auto sector… I mean roughly 80 percent of people polled say this is the case. German politics is far too closely connected to business and ultimately this will be very harmful to the economy,” he told CNBC in a phone interview on Monday.
Wolff added that it was difficult to predict whether Merkel’s and Schulz’s criticism of the auto industry would translate into votes for their respective parties, especially given the “sleepy, uninteresting and very dull” nature of the campaign to date.
