Katherina Reiche becomes Minister of Economic Affairs: What now?

The CDU has announced its seven of the 17 ministerial posts for the incoming federal government. Deputy CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Johann Wadephul is slated to become the new Foreign Minister, the new Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernization will be headed by Karsten Wildberger, CEO of the MediaMarktSaturn Group, and the future Minister of Transport will be CDU Bundestag member Patrick Schnieder. This means that, alongside well-known names from politics and business, Friedrich Merz's cabinet will also include relatively unknown figures nationwide, such as the future Minister of Health Nina Warken. The appointment to the Ministry of Economic Affairs will be particularly interesting. Katherina Reiche, CEO of Westenergie, a subsidiary of E.ON, will take over from Robert Habeck, who, among other things, is also Chair of the Federal Government's National Hydrogen Council. Is this a signal that the transformation of the energy system should remain one of the top priorities for the economy?

The simple answer to the question posed is, of course, yes. The expansion of renewable energies and the overarching issues of the energy transition must be at the top of the next government's to-do list. Nevertheless, it's striking that Reiche is rooted in the energy industry and doesn't come from another sector. Secretary General Carsten Linnemann would certainly have been an example, identified by journalists Susanne Götze and Annika Joers as part of the Bermuda Triangle of the energy transition. Katherina Reiche, on the other hand, makes a solid impression, which isn't necessarily difficult given this comparison.

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From 1998 to 2015, she was a member of the German Bundestag, from 2005 to 2009 one of the deputy chairs of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, and from 2009 to 2013, she served as Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Everything points to a political career focused on membership in the Bundestag. This was until Reiche resigned from her Bundestag mandate on September 4, 2015, because she had already been elected General Manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) in February of that year. There, she represented the interests of municipal utilities and the municipal economy until 2019. Since then, she has been Chairwoman of the Board of the energy service provider and infrastructure provider Westenergie, a subsidiary of E.ON. Reiche is also Chairwoman of the National Hydrogen Council and a member of the Supervisory Board of the mobility company Schaeffler. In addition, the Swedish energy company Ingrid Capacity announced that it had appointed her to its Board of Directors, Handelsblatt reported on Friday, April 25, 2025.

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The career of the future Minister of Economic Affairs gives the impression that she has increasingly aligned herself with the CDU line, not only in her political positions but also in her lobbying efforts. A role model within the party, of course, is federal chairman Friedrich Merz, who, after a brief political failure, concentrated on positions on numerous supervisory and administrative boards from 2009 to 2021. In contrast to Merz, the companies in which Reiche is involved are at least partly interested in the energy transition. So what can be inferred from her previous positions?

In addition to a positive attitude towards renewable energies, Reiche has so far spoken out more heavily on the topics of hydrogen and nuclear energy. "For our country to be able to compete internationally, we now need clear political guidelines, reliable investment conditions, and above all, speed in implementation," said Katherina Reiche at the launch of the HydroNet Sauerland hydrogen infrastructure project in early April. The model project, funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK), is managed by Westenergie and is intended to demonstrate how a hydrogen economy can be integrated into existing industrial structures. The industry has long been longing for these political guidelines and investment conditions. The incoming Minister of Economic Affairs should have learned this in her position on the National Hydrogen Council. When it comes to concrete measures, she will not be able to bypass funding programs. However, the climate portions of the investment fund should be available for this purpose. Whether she will succeed in making green hydrogen a truly economic issue over the legislative period remains highly questionable.

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It will be important for all areas of the energy transition that the federal government agrees on which technologies and measures should be used to address the transition. To this end, it is crucial to finally stop wasting time on nuclear energy. "If European countries are planning new construction, Germany cannot stand aside," Reiche told "Bild am Sonntag" in 2019. Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder also positioned his sister party as open to nuclear energy during this election campaign, to the point where even Robert Habeck participated in the Söder Challenge, proclaimed by author Marc-Uwe Kling, to demonstrate that building nuclear power plants is utopian. Her participation in projects that have little to do with nuclear energy offers hope that Katherina Reiche might deviate from the strict CDU line in some positions. The companies in which she currently holds positions work in solution-oriented areas of the energy transition. This offers at least some hope for the role of the Minister of Economic Affairs in the CDU-SPD government.