Please support the Ministry’s public relations work: We need your consent to be able to measure your user activity on our website using etracker. A pseudonymised evaluation of this data by etracker helps us to improve our website. You can revoke your consent at any time for the future. Once you have made your selection, the consent management screen will appear at the bottom of the page. You can use this to stop or to reactivate the statistical evaluation at any point. You can reactivate tracking by dragging the slider in the opposite direction.
This website sets temporary session cookies. These are strictly necessary and therefore cannot be deselected. Their sole purpose is to enable you to use the website.
The Ministry also presents its work on this website in the form of videos. These are made available by the provider TV1 using JW Player. Please consent to the transmission of your IP address and other technical data to JW Player and allow JW Player to set cookies on your end device if you wish to view videos on our website. We also provide a consent management function for this at the bottom of the page. You can use this to control whether JW Player is enabled or not.
You can find detailed information on your rights and how we protect your privacy in our privacy policy.
Consent to the use of JW Player for video streaming
The Ministry also presents its work on this website in the form of videos. These are made available by the provider TV1 using JW Player. Please consent to the transmission of your IP address and other technical data to JW Player and allow JW Player to set cookies on your end device if you wish to view videos on our website. We also provide a consent management function for this at the bottom of the page. You can use this to control whether JW Player is enabled or not.
Hannover Messe 2025 – Leaders' Dialogue
Federal Minister Robert Habeck calls for cooperation as a counter-model to isolationism and protectionism
Introduction
On 1 April 2025, the Leaders' Dialogue 2025 took place at the Hannover Messe: a high-profile event jointly organized by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. High-ranking representatives from politics, business and research came together under the guiding theme of “Data-driven Industry - Shaping a New Era”. In three panels, they discussed how digital technologies and data-driven value creation networks are shaping the industrial future.
In the opening panel “Call for Action: How to Ensure Digital Competitiveness?”, key impulses for strengthening the competitiveness of the industry were discussed. The focus was on data-driven business models and their potential to increase global competitiveness. Federal Minister Dr. Robert Habeck emphasized the importance of European cooperation with simultaneous data sovereignty: “We must cooperate! Cooperation is [...] the keyword in times like these, the counter-model to isolationism and protectionism!” With a view to the networking power of the fair, he concluded his impulse with the rhetorical question “Where could be a better place than at the international Hannover Messe to advance this internationalization of data sharing?”
Federal Minister of Economics Affairs and Climate Action Dr. Robert Habeck at the Leaders' Dialogue 2025
In addition to the Federal Minister, the other panel participants also presented their “Calls for Actions” - including State Secretary Claudia Müller (BMBF), Philip Jennings (Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, Canada), Peter Leibinger (BDI President), Dr. Tanja Rückert (Bosch), Catherine Jestin (Airbus SE), Tim Meyerjürgens (TenneT) and Cedrik Neike (Siemens).
The latter called for the establishment of data ecosystems and on behalf of the industry: “We need to achieve scaling in order to implement this.” Neike also thanked the German government for taking the lead, especially with regard to small and medium-sized companies: “Catena-X and Manufacturing-X, this standardization of data for all, the small and medium-sized companies, we have to implement it! Because not everyone is an ASML or an Airbus.”
Europe's position in the AI competition
A second panel examined Europe's current position in the global AI competition with the question “Is Europe Keeping Up in the Race for Industrial AI?”. The central questions here were: How can Europe use its industrial base and expertise to take a leading role in AI applications? What regulatory framework conditions are necessary to support innovation and maintain European values?
The participants put forward numerous solutions to these questions: Dominik Metzger (SAP) initially stated that Europe needs a sovereign infrastructure. He also called for applications to be built on an open source basis and emphasized the importance of quantum computing as a future technology. Bernd Wagner (STACKIT, Schwarz Digits) and Dr. Christine Knackfuß-Nikolic (T-Systems) emphasized the importance of investments - especially in the field of research. Prof. Holger Hanselka (Fraunhofer) explained that in order for data to be accessible to AI, “simple tools” are needed to raise existing data treasures to a higher level of data readiness in the future. Dr. Yasser Jadidi (Aleph Alpha Research) concluded the panel with a clear appeal: “We need a mindset and flexibility - that's the key.”
How can industrial innovations be scaled up?
The final panel discussion “Are Our Solutions Creating Enough Value to Scale Fast?” focused on the scaling potential of industrial innovations. In this round, concrete examples of successful scaling models were presented and the barriers that need to be overcome in order to implement data-driven innovations faster and more broadly in the industry were discussed.
In this context, Klaus Bröhl (Integrated Worlds GmbH) called for the benefits of solutions for SMEs to be clearly emphasized: “We need to start thinking in terms of blueprints.” Finding the right arguments for this essential target group will also be crucial in the future.
The Leaders' Dialogue as a central stage for the data-driven industry
This year's Leaders' Dialogue 2025 once again provided a central platform for international exchange on the future of industry, with these high-level panels and important messages. The event showed that cooperation between politics, business and research is crucial to driving forward the digital transformation of industry and strengthening Europe in the global competitive arena.
