The six states which comprise Eastern Germany are looking for foreign investment - from countries like Ireland - to boost their fortunes along the lines of the Irish economic model.
Information Technology companies, life sciences/chemical companies, automotive supply companies and service industries are the four main areas being targeted, according to Dr Hans Christoph von Rohr, chairman of the executive board of the Industrial Development Council.
Dr von Rohr - who was in Dublin yesterday - maintains that Eastern Germany is an attractive location for industry and business because of its new communications structure, roads, water supply, sewerage and pollution control, all of which have been developed in the past 10 years. Indeed, while two million East Germans went to live in the West after the Wall came down, 1.2 million Westerners went to live in the East.
Dr von Rohr says that 94 per cent of East Germans have third-level education; after reunification, 25 per cent took additional training in various skills such as marketing; the labour market is far more flexible than in West Germany because agreements such as the PPF have been scrapped; 15,000 industries have been privatised in the past 10 years, while 4,000 companies have closed and four million jobs have been lost but 520,000 new businesses have been started.
"In Eastern Germany they changed the rules because they had to. Mostly they got rid of labour market regulations. Now 74 per cent of the companies are not in the system any more."
Dr von Rohr said the Eastern German states had a young, highly educated and flexible workforce, but conceded that 20-25 per cent of the workforce, mainly older and still pro-Communist, were not as flexible. But he explained: "Midnight on July 1st, 1990, we freed East Germany. There was no protection, like in other Eastern European countries. In the Arctic climate of global competition from one day to the other, there was no transition period."
"We have lessons to learn, not all copying you, or what you did, but learning from Ireland," he said.
