German Cabinet to Walk 1,200 Kilometers to Every DAX Factory, Arriving on Foot to Personally Reboot Economy
Chancellor and DAX chiefs launch a nationwide walking tour of industrial sites, vowing to inspect every conveyor belt and personally turn on every machine.
BERLIN — Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the chief executives of all forty DAX companies have begun a 1,200-kilometer walking tour of Germany's industrial sites, vowing to personally inspect every conveyor belt and restart every idle machine by hand. The pilgrimage, which began Monday at the gates of a Wolfsburg plant, will pass through 340 towns and is scheduled to conclude when the last participant physically turns a key in a Ludwigshafen chemical reactor.
«We have decided that no investment will be approved until a member of the cabinet has stood on the factory floor and personally pressed the green button,» a government spokesman said. «The Chancellor will carry a clipboard and a thermos. He will walk until the economy grows.»
Each morning at 5 a.m., the group departs on foot, wearing matching high-visibility vests and carrying a portable generator. At each stop, the Chancellor and a DAX chief must jointly flip a circuit breaker while an economist reads aloud a growth forecast. Local mayors have been ordered to pave new footpaths and install benches every two kilometers. Residents in the path have been instructed to hang banners reading «Keep Going» and to provide hot soup at designated checkpoints.
By Wednesday, the group had reached a Mittelstand machine-tool workshop in Lower Saxony, where the Chancellor personally tightened a bolt and declared the site «transformed.» A second wave of executives is now walking to Berlin to meet the first group, carrying replacement parts and a spare pair of boots for the Finance Minister.
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