Government formation: Merz makes MediaMarkt manager Digital Minister

Since 2021, 55-year-old Karsten Wildberger has been in charge of business at Ceconomy AG, which is behind the Media Markt and Saturn brands. He has made few public political statements to date, but Wildberger has been an honorary member of the CDU Economic Council since 2017. At an event organized by the CDU organization, which aims to bring entrepreneurial perspectives into the party, he called for more courage for long-term innovations before the election, as Mark Zuckerberg had shown with his involvement in virtual reality technologies.

Before joining the electronics retailer, Wildberger worked for energy company E.ON and Telstra, a telecommunications provider from Australia that became active in Germany with MedionMobile, among others. In addition to this experience, Wildberger, who holds a doctorate in physics, could bring the concept of the customer from his previous career to the modernization of administration.

Friedrich Merz has pulled off a real surprise with the appointment of Wildberger: For a long time, other names had also been bandied about for the new department. The two departments of Digital Administration and Digital Society from the Federal Ministry of the Interior as well as the departments of Data and Digital Policy and Digital Connectivity from the previous Federal Ministry of Digital Affairs and Transport will form the core of the new ministry, which has yet to be established. The coalition agreement sets out the comprehensive digitalization of administrative services as one of the goals for the ministry. This includes, among other things, the establishment of a mandatory citizen account and a switch to “Digital Only” as administrative access, but also the completion of register modernization and the reorganization of responsibilities between federal and state levels.

Thomas Jarzombek from Düsseldorf and Philipp Amthor from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will join the politically inexperienced Wildberger as experienced players in Berlin politics -- Jarzombek has long been involved in digital and research policy for the CDU, while Amthor, as an experienced interior politician, is likely to deal primarily with administrative reforms.

Warken becomes health minister

Nina Warken (CDU) will be the new Federal Minister of Health, which means she will also be responsible for health digitization and the nationwide rollout of electronic patient records. The member of the Bundestag from Baden-Württemberg has so far been largely unknown to many in the media. Heise readers will probably remember her from the time of the NSA committee of inquiry: Warken was involved there for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group as chairwoman in the partial clarification of the allegations against the US technical intelligence service and against the Federal Intelligence Service as a result of the Snowden revelations. As a domestic politician, Warken has also repeatedly dealt with digital issues – unlike some other names previously mooted as potential health ministers.

The CSU will then announce its ministers at midday, followed by the Social Democrats on Wednesday – subject to the approval of the coalition agreement by its members.

(nie)