BioNTech Closes Three German Sites, Finally Creating Jobs for Imported Skilled Workers

In 2020, The German federal government awarded up to €375 million to BioNTech and up to €252 million to CureVac - later acquired by BioNTech.

€627 million in grants intended for vaccine development, clinical work and scaling production capacity in Germany were spent under the BMBF COVID vaccine programme.

Separately, the vaccines were then purchased commercially.

The EU Commission negotiated advance-purchase agreements on behalf of member states.

Germany paid for its allocated BioNTech/Pfizer doses just like the other member states. 

While some European states still recommend the annual booster dose and many of the classical vaccines have been shifted to the revolutional gentech mRNA platform, sinking demand simply does not justify these facilities anymore, and it seems that nobody is interested in acquiring these either.

This is excellent news for Germany’s skilled-worker strategy.

For years, the country has explained that it urgently needs more qualified workers from abroad and so, imported these en-masse. The only problem was that there were no satisfactory premises in which these scientists could practice their workmanship.

At last, all those imported engineers, researchers, technicians and scientists politicians keep promising Germany needs will have somewhere to apply.

The EU is now expected to consider whether a few more hundred million euros might be required to prepare these newly available premises for Germany’s imported skilled workforce, preferably with state-of-the-art laboratories, integration offices, language programmes, diversity coordinators and, naturally, local mosques.

After all, it would be unreasonable to expect highly qualified newcomers to work in facilities that were merely good enough for BioNTech.

Germany may finally be ready for the next generation of scientific achievement.

We are therefore extremely pleased with the outcome and look forward to the many accomplishments with which this new line of publicly sponsored research will undoubtedly bless us.