Employment effects could take years to emerge if companies choose other regions for new plants, ABB Chief Executive Morten Wierod told WELT, as he questioned Germany’s pace of reform.
Germany had 2.955 million people unemployed in October, according to the Federal Employment Agency. The tally was 44,000 above the same month a year earlier, although it fell by 40,000 from September. After seasonal adjustment, unemployment increased by 4,000.
Preliminary figures from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office put electricity prices for businesses and other non-household users at an average of 17.64 euro cents per kilowatt-hour in the first half of 2026. The measure excludes value-added tax and other taxes businesses can deduct. The average was 8.3% lower than in the preceding six months, but 18.4% above the first half of 2021. The office said it will revise the preliminary figures once details of planned industrial price relief are known.
WELT reported that Wierod made his comments in an interview with Welt am Sonntag. He questioned whether Germany could enact reforms quickly enough and urged Berlin to lead efforts to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness. He warned that failing to make deeper changes could leave the region at risk of mass unemployment.
Wierod said businesses follow customer demand when deciding where to put new investment. He said demand had grown faster in the United States and Asia than in Europe, while high energy and raw material costs weighed on European producers. He also argued that European policy had put too much emphasis on regulation and too little on innovation. He presented energy prices and customer demand as factors in decisions about where production is based.
Wierod also criticized Germany’s nuclear phaseout and cited small modular reactors as a possible future power source for factories and data centers. Germany’s last nuclear plants stopped operating in April 2023, the federal government says.
The warning follows EconoTimes’ earlier coverage of German manufacturing job losses and calls for EU reform.
