Meet the man who may decide the fate of German industry
Klaus Müller should have been an anonymous bureaucrat, but he’s become a celebrity
![Klaus Müller, President of the German Federal Network Agency, looks into the camera for a portrait during his tour of the Astora gas storage facility.](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/media-assets/image/20221203_WBP001.jpg)
When Klaus Müller accepted the job as boss of the Federal Network Agency, Germany’s regulator for electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, post and railway markets, he hoped he would spend his time on expanding renewables and laying fibre-optic cables. A former state minister for the environment and agriculture in Schleswig-Holstein, he is close to Robert Habeck, the federal economy minister and a fellow Green. He cares deeply about the Greens’ favourite causes, such as a rapid shift to carbon-neutrality, which make captains of German industry uneasy.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The hand on the tap”
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