03.02 Science & Technology
Technology policy and the question of sovereignty
Since 2025, the federal ministry that funds research has also owned Germany's technology strategy. This page sets out what Dorothee Bär's ministry has committed to in artificial intelligence, quantum, microelectronics, biotechnology, space and energy, and keeps her documented positions apart from the wider analysis.
How to read this page
Two registers, kept apart
Technology policy invites grand claims. To keep the record honest, every section below separates what Bär and her ministry have demonstrably said or decided from the context and judgement that this site adds. Government goals adopted by cabinet are labelled as political positions; they are commitments, not results.
- Documented statement
- Bär's own words, verbatim, with date and source.
- Political position
- Goals adopted by the federal government or presented by her ministry.
- Verified fact
- Decisions, dates and figures confirmed in official or reliable sources.
- Analysis
- Context and interpretation by this site.
01 — The organising idea
Technological sovereignty
Not autarky, but the ability to choose: to build, buy or partner without being forced.
Analysis “Technological sovereignty” has become the common vocabulary of European technology policy. It usually means that a country or the EU should have enough of its own capability in critical technologies — chips, cloud and AI, satellites, energy — to avoid one-sided dependence on suppliers that might fail or be used as leverage. It does not usually mean producing everything at home, which no European economy could afford.
For Germany, the debate sharpened after the supply-chain shocks of the pandemic years, the energy crisis that followed Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and growing rivalry between the United States and China. The new ministry structure of May 2025, which moved technology policy, space and the High-Tech Agenda under one roof, is a direct institutional answer to that debate.
Documented statement Bär has used the word most explicitly about space. In the Bundestag budget debate of 28 November 2025 she said:
„Raumfahrt ist kein Selbstzweck, sondern es geht dabei um Wirtschaft, Sicherheit und Souveränität.“
“Space is not an end in itself; it is about the economy, security and sovereignty.”
Her statement on research security of December 2025, quoted on the research policy page, uses the same pairing of prosperity and sovereignty. The frame recurs: technology as a matter of economic strength and national and European security at once.
02 — The technologies
Seven fields, one ministry
The High-Tech Agenda Germany, adopted by cabinet on 30 July 2025, names six key technologies. Space, which the ministry also owns, makes a seventh field. Open each entry for the documented position and the analysis.
01Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence here means machine-learning systems — above all large models trained on vast amounts of data — that can recognise patterns, generate text and images, or control machines. Training the largest models requires enormous computing capacity, which is why “compute” has become a policy object in its own right.
Political position
The High-Tech Agenda sets the goal that 10 per cent of economic output should be “AI-based” by 2030. It aims for at least one European AI gigafactory — a very large computing centre for training AI models — to be located in Germany. For 2025 the government named large funding initiatives for next-generation AI models. The first-version roadmaps of May 2026 add a goal that more than half of manufacturing SMEs use AI in core processes by 2029, and a €100m “KI-Robotik-Booster”.
Analysis
Analysis The gigafactory ambition depends on decisions in Brussels as much as in Berlin, since the gigafactories are a European Union initiative and several member states are competing to host them. According to reporting, Germany submitted several expressions of interest. Until a site is chosen and financed, the goal remains an ambition. The 10 per cent target is also hard to measure: there is no settled statistical definition of an “AI-based” share of GDP.
02Quantum technologies
Quantum technologies exploit effects such as superposition and entanglement to compute, measure and communicate in ways classical devices cannot. The field is a long-standing research-ministry responsibility and stayed with the BMFTR in 2025.
Political position
Flagship goal: “at least two error-corrected quantum computers at European top level” in Germany by 2030. The roadmap of May 2026 foresees the first logical qubits in Germany by 2028, at least three data centres with quantum computers by 2029, 25 new quantum professorships by 2030 and a demonstrated quantum advantage by 2032.
Analysis
Analysis These are among the most technically precise goals in the agenda, which makes them testable. They are also exposed to scientific risk that no ministry controls. The quantum technology page explains what a logical qubit is and why error correction is the decisive hurdle.
03Microelectronics
Microelectronics covers the design and manufacture of semiconductor chips. Europe has strong positions in equipment, materials and specialised chips for cars and industry, but limited capacity in the most advanced chip production and design.
Political position
The High-Tech Agenda commits to a competence centre for chip design by 2026. A microelectronics roadmap was among the first six presented to the Bundestag's research committee on 20 May 2026.
Analysis
Analysis Chip design is a more realistic lever for a research ministry than chip factories, which are subsidised mainly under European state-aid rules and the EU Chips Act and fall largely to the economics side of government. Design skills are scarce, and a centre that trains people and gives start-ups access to design tools addresses a genuine bottleneck.
04Biotechnology
Biotechnology uses living cells and molecules to make medicines, materials and food. Germany has a sizeable sector: more than 1,000 biotech companies with around 56,000 employees and roughly €11bn in revenue, according to figures reported in July 2025.
Political position
The agenda foresees more genome-sequencing capacity, AI-driven drug development projects from the second quarter of 2026, and support for a translation centre for gene and cell therapies. The roadmap adds two milestones for 2028: a first approval of an mRNA cancer immunotherapy and a gene and cell therapy translation centre.
Analysis
Analysis A drug approval is decided by regulators on the basis of clinical evidence, not by a ministry. Read the 2028 approval goal as an expectation about where the pipeline stands, not something policy can deliver on its own. More on the biotechnology page.
05Fusion and climate-neutral energy
Fusion research tries to reproduce on Earth the reaction that powers the Sun, using magnetic confinement (tokamaks and stellarators such as Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald) or lasers.
Verified fact Political position
The cabinet adopted an “Aktionsplan Fusion” on 1 October 2025 with more than €2bn foreseen by 2029. In government question time on 8 October 2025, according to the Bundestag's summary, Bär said that €2bn would go into fusion research by 2029 so that the world's first fusion power plant could be built in Germany.
Analysis
Analysis No country has yet operated a fusion power plant. The goal is a statement of ambition on a long and uncertain timescale; the measurable part is the funding and the research hubs. See fusion research.
06Climate-neutral mobility
This field covers batteries, alternative drives and related technologies. The High-Tech Agenda lists it as the sixth key technology.
Political position
Battery competence clusters from 2026 are among the agenda's flagship goals, and a battery roadmap was among the first six published in May 2026.
Analysis
Analysis Battery research has been funded federally for years; the question is whether new clusters can strengthen a European cell industry that has struggled against Asian competitors.
07Space technology
Space came to the BMFTR from the economics ministry in 2025, together with satellite navigation and Earth observation from the transport ministry.
Verified fact
At the ESA Council at Ministerial Level in Bremen in November 2025, Germany subscribed €5.4bn, about 23 per cent of the total and the largest contribution. The 2026 federal budget provides almost €2.4bn for space. In September 2026 the German start-up Isar Aerospace reached orbit from Andøya in Norway, the first commercial provider to do so from continental Europe.
Analysis
Analysis Space is where the sovereignty argument is most concrete: secure satellite communications, navigation and independent access to orbit are security assets. The full picture is on the space policy page.
03 — From research to market
The long road from laboratory to product
Germany's familiar weakness is not invention but scale-up. The MP3 audio format, developed at a Fraunhofer institute, is the stock example of a German invention whose largest commercial successes came elsewhere. Every recent government has promised to close this gap.
Analysis The BMFTR now holds instruments at several stages of that road, which earlier governments spread across ministries. The list on the right shows which tool belongs to which stage. Whether owning the whole chain produces better outcomes is the central test of the 2025 reorganisation.
The instruments for transfer and start-ups are explained in depth on the innovation page.
- Stage 1 · Discovery
Basic and applied research
Institutional funding for the research organisations, project funding, and the joint Excellence Strategy with the Länder.
- Stage 2 · Direction
Key-technology strategy
The High-Tech Agenda and its roadmaps decide where money concentrates and which milestones count.
- Stage 3 · Breakthrough
High-risk funding
SPRIND, the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation, finances radical ideas with more freedom than ordinary programmes.
- Stage 4 · Infrastructure
Shared facilities
Computing capacity for AI, quantum computers in data centres and the four “Hightech-Spaces” proposed in the roadmap drafts.
- Stage 5 · Market
Demand and first customers
Public contracts such as ESA launch services can give young companies their first reference customers — a lever shared with other ministries and the EU.
04 — The debate
Picking winners, or setting direction?
A mission-oriented technology policy is always open to the charge that governments are poor at choosing which technologies will succeed.
Supporters argue
Focusing scarce money on a handful of fields with concrete milestones is better than spreading it thinly. Competitors such as the United States and China run explicit industrial strategies in AI, chips and space.
Putting research, technology and space in one ministry gives a single political owner to goals that previously fell between departments.
Critics argue
Concentration risks neglecting basic research, where tomorrow's key technologies originate. Some milestones depend on factors no ministry controls, from EU site decisions to regulatory approvals.
One year into the term, the Greens' research spokesperson Ayse Asar said the government spoke of strategic roadmaps and dialogue formats but could not answer central questions about the actual impact of the money spent.
Continuity with the digital years
Analysis Bär's interest in technology predates the ministry. As chair of the CSU's net-policy association CSUnet and later as Commissioner for Digitalisation (2018–2021), she argued for faster adoption of new technologies, sometimes provocatively — as with her 2018 remark about flying taxis, which drew widespread mockery at the time. The BMFTR is now responsible for funding Advanced Air Mobility, a footnote that shows how debates from her earlier offices have resurfaced in the current one. Those episodes are documented on the digitalisation page and under criticism and controversies.
The difference now is power and money. As commissioner she coordinated without a ministry or budget of her own; as minister she controls one of the largest discretionary budgets in the federal government. Her technology record will therefore be judged less on what she says about the future than on whether the milestones of the High-Tech Agenda are reached.