Clarification – ZEW President Achim Wambach Served Only as Temporary Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Federal Insurance Office

According to media reports published in late August 2018, Professor Achim Wambach, president of the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Mannheim, will no longer be a member of the scientific advisory board of the German Federal Insurance Office. Although this information is correct, this could give the impression that the Federal Minister of Health chose to no longer appoint Professor Wambach as member of the advisory board. This interpretation is, however, incorrect, since Achim Wambach was only a temporary member of the scientific advisory board of the German Federal Insurance Office anyway.

The German Federal Insurance Office also provided information on this issue on its website (in German only). As the notice on the website states, the appointment of Achim Wambach was made on a temporary basis for the period between 1 February 2017 and 15 June 2018 and was limited to his involvement in developing a special report on the effects of the Risk Structure Compensation Scheme as well as a report on the regional distributional effects of this scheme. With the finalisation of these reports, Achim Wambach’s term of office as member of the scientific advisory board ended automatically.

For further information please contact:

Gunter Grittmann, Phone: +49 (0)621 1235-103, E-mail: gunter.grittmann@zew.de