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Economic revamp a chance to end unemployment, says Scholz
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Scholz reiterates support for Ukraine "as long as
necessary"
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Expect to fill gas storage without price peaks - Habeck
(Recasts with Scholz comments)
BERLIN, March 6 (Reuters) - Germany's push to achieve
greenhouse gas neutrality and shape up its industrialised
economy is such a big job it could make unemployment a thing of
the past, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday.
Scholz has vowed to lead the biggest transformation of the
German economy in a century, aiming to make the country
carbon-neutral by 2045 and fit for the future by fostering
investment in digitalisation.
Speaking after a two-day cabinet meeting at Schloss
Meseberg, the chancellor's country residence outside Berlin,
Scholz said the planned economic overhaul was a "great task" but
could be achieved.
"What we have taken from our discussions is that we will
succeed," he told reporters, adding that the effort required
"will create the possibility for us to say that in the next few
years Germany will leave the problem of unemployment behind".
"There is a lot to do," added Scholz, a Social Democrat,
flanked by Economy Minister Robert Habeck of the ecologist
Greens and Finance Minister Christian Lindner, a liberal Free
Democrat.
Their three-way coalition is the first of its kind at the
federal level in Germany.
In the immediate term, Habeck said it should be possible to
avoid surges in gas prices this year like those seen last year,
when Germany and other European countries scrambled to fill
their reserves due to loss of supply from Russia.
"It should also be possible to fill the storage facilities
over the summer without seeing price peaks like we saw last
year," said Habeck.
Scholz, who met U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington on
Friday, also reiterated Germany's support for Ukraine.
"We will support Ukraine as long as necessary," he said.
(Reporting by Miranda Murray, Friederike Heine and Paul Carrel;
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
