In 2018, 39.2% of all commercial start-ups in NRW were founded by foreign nationals. In this way, they provided substantial support for the establishment of new businesses in North Rhine-Westphalia, as Dr. Rosemarie Kay and Dr. Sebastian Nielen state in the study "Foreign nationals as founders in NRW between 2003 and 2018". Their extensive publication was commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation.
The deputy managing director of the IfM Bonn sees one of the main reasons for this development in the restricted free movement of workers, which applied until the end of 2013 to citizens of the eight Eastern and Central European EU accession states of 2004 and the two EU accession states of 2007 (Romania and Bulgaria) and another in the amendment of the trade regulations in 2014, which meant the abolition of the master craftsman's certificate in a number of trades.
For years, the founding activities in NRW have been divided into the strong economic regions of Düsseldorf and Cologne-Bonn and the weaker, more rural economic regions of Münsterland, Ostwestfalen-Lippe and Südwestfalen. The two authors were able to observe a similar start-up behaviour of foreign and domestic nationals: In the regions in which few companies are founded, there are also few start-ups by foreign nationals.
At the same time, the authors also note clear differences between the number of start-ups by foreign nationals and Germans in their study: "Foreign nationals found fewer start-ups in the service sector than domestic nationals. Instead, they are often found in the construction industry for example." says Dr. Rosemarie Kay.
