German Chancellor Friedrich Merz granted a freshly established digital ministry extensive powers in an organisational decree signed on Tuesday by the newly installed coalition government.
The country’s first ever Digital Ministry will be headed by Karsten Wildberger - a former businessman - and will take over departments or responsibilities that are currently hosted under six ministries, in a bid to accelerate digitisation in Germany.
The Ministry of the Interior, for example, will cede two departments that deal with digital administration and digital society as well as general IT procurement, whereas the former Transport and Digital Affairs ministry will hand over digital and data policy, as well as its department for digital infrastructures.
From the Justice Ministry, the Digital Ministry will inherit artificial intelligence matters and will therefore likely become in charge of setting up or appointing a market surveillance authority to ensure businesses’ compliance with the EU’s AI Act.
In late April, Merz appointed Karsten Wildberger, CEO of Ceconomy AG - the parent company of consumer electronic companies MediaMarkt and Saturn - as Germany’s first ever digital minister.
His nomination came as a surprise as he lacks political experience, though as chairman of MediaMarktSaturn Group he has led an enterprise spanning 1,000 consumer electronics stores in eleven countries.
Merz’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called before February's federal election for a ministry for digitisation to be created distinct from the Ministry of Transport, which currently handles digital issues.
Dirk Freytag, President of the Federal Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW) welcomed the new responsibilities of the ministry in a statement but added that “data policy, which is the basis of any digitisation project, remains fragmented.”
Bitkom, a German digital industry association, said Wildberger has a core task of making Germany a “digitally sovereign country – in the economy, state and society”.
