Starting a family in Dresden? Tarun Shahi, originally from Punjab in India, finds it hard to imagine. “I don’t want to stay,” he blurted. The reason is the presence of the far right, a big concern for many foreigners in the capital of Saxony. “I feel safe,” he assures, “but you have to know where you are going, know the neighborhoods to avoid.” At 36, this computer scientist married to a German woman never does his shopping on Mondays in the city center. On this day, followers of the Islamophobic Pegida movement have marched there every week since 2015. “They pass through here, on the Altmarkt,” he says, pointing to the city’s largest historic square, the one that hosts the famous markets. of Saxony. “We now see Russian flags,” he adds.
The rise of the far right in the polls, which in this region reaches 35% of voting intentions, the weekly parades of neo-Nazis nostalgic for the Third Reich, ex-anti-vaxxers and other “angry citizens” (Wutburger) cast a shadow over one of Germany’s largest tech clusters. “This situation makes me sad. I am very sad to see that these people are not aware of the dramatic consequences of turning inward,” laments Dirk Röhrborn, president of Silicon Saxony, the business association of the Saxon high-tech.
Immigration, the key to prosperity
The prospect of a victory for the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in the regional elections on September 1, a party which does not exclude an exit from the European Union and the “deportations” of “undesirable” Germans, is very bad omen for a region which urgently needs foreign labor. “Our future also depends on immigration,” summarizes Dirk Röhrborn. “If we turn inward, we will lose our prosperity,” he assures.
More than thirty years after reunification, Dresden is no longer this black and white city cut off from the outside world. The “Florence of the Elbe” attracts millions of tourists every year. “Today, it is a city full of colors, international and open to the world,” says Frank Bösenberg, native of the country and managing director of Silicon Saxony.
Saxony is the largest microelectronics center in Europe. “Our sector is growing,” insists Frank Bösenberg. The number of employees in the sector (76,000) is increasing by almost 10% per year. There will undoubtedly be more than 100,000 in 2030. Volkswagen, Porsche and BMW are established in Saxony to directly source electronic chips. In this context, workers are working day and night on the site of the new semiconductor production factory built by Bosch, Infineon and the Taiwanese manufacturer TSMC, world leader in the sector. The announcement of this investment in August 2023 was seen as the consecration of the industrial sovereignty policy led by the federal government. “Germany will become one of the leading semiconductor production sites in Europe,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at the time.
“The advantage of Dresden, in addition to its large companies and SMEs, is the presence of numerous universities and training and research establishments. We have 4 universities and 20 technological institutes”, explains Dirk Röhrborn whose association, which has 500 members, continues to grow. “We have 5 to 10 new ones every month,” he says happily.
The AfD threat
But the far right risks putting a brutal brake on this success story. In 2040, Germany will be short of more than 660,000 IT specialists, according to the federation of new technology companies, Bitkom. To attract the best minds on the planet, Dresden must offer long-term prospects to engineers from the four corners of the planet. “My compatriots prefer English-speaking countries because of the language,” explains Tarun Shahi. “But they also look at the quality of life, the infrastructure and, of course, security. On the networks, Saxony does not have a good reputation cause of the extreme right.”
“The possibility of a government with AfD participation is a reality,” laments Sylvia Pfefferkorn, president of the association Wirtschaft für ein weltoffenes Sachsen (Companies for a Saxony open to the world). “I always believed that the far right would lose its influence by becoming radicalized. I was wrong. They are now at 35% in the polls, I sometimes have tears in my eyes,” she says. It becomes difficult to motivate people to come and live and work in Saxony.”
“We are aware of the situation, and that is why we are highlighting our values and calling on people to vote,” adds Dirk Röhrborn, who welcomes the civil society uprising at the start of the year against the extreme right, which has seen Dresden experience its biggest demonstrations since those which brought down the communist regime in 1989. He is hopeful that democracy will overcome the “test of populism”, and that Saxony will continue its mad rise in the world of electronic chips. “When the Wall fell, I was 16 years old,” he says. “The world opened up to me. I studied what I wanted. I went abroad, I traveled to around the world. I learned English. Without Europe, I would never have been able to found my IT company.” And added: “I don’t want to go back.”
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