A drugged competition, with deep economic and social imbalances. But Germany that is now re -shed wants to continue dictating Europe’s rules.
Berlin has fallen another wall and as in 1989, the European Championships will pay and the Italians in particular. The “iron curtain” of the budget penalty has come down e The farewell to weapons also falls. Under the rubble of this immaterial wall, the German economic model imagined by Helmut Kohl is also buried, but absurd to European commandment with Angela Merkel who has exploited cunning, lies, bureaucratic hegemonies. The iron chancellor repeated: what has harmful to Germany, harms Europe. But now things have changed. Because Berlin is together the most firm economy of the whole continent, China’s access door – and it is no coincidence that Ursula von der Leyen, Delfina di Merkel, raises the tuning tuning tunnel with Washington – and the first reason for contrast between Europe and the USA.
The designated Chancellor Friedrich Merz was approved by the Bundestag the budget breakdown and gets back betting 500 billion, which can go up to a thousand on its industry, on infrastructure, on the country’s amaferment. Particular attention must be paid to investments in ports. Donald Trump’s affection for Greenland was born from the fact that the Chinese want to take advantage of the arctic route: so if it were, it would be the first European airport, cutting the Mediterranean out. Once again Germany is rich in the detriment of Italy. It is not difficult to note that all the strategies that the Von der Leyen is putting on the field by Brussels have the first objective of saving the accounts of the Federal Republic. But it is complicated if the crisis is – as it seems evident – the result of a model now in cream.
For at least three decades, German economic policy has been played on three elements: wage moderation, export – especially towards China – with the utmost aggression possible by keeping the most fearful European partners with the financial statements – Italy was nailed by austerity policies imposed by Brussels – and cost of negligible energy because the gas was purchased from Vladimir Putin. In 2014, after the invasion of Crimea, on behalf of the organization and cooperation organization in Europe, Germany first had to be guarantor of the stability of the borders in Ukraine. The iron chancellor, however, after the atomic disaster of Fukushima – we are in 2011 – began to extinguish the nuclear power plants to “attach himself to the tube” of Putin’s gas. Is it a slander to believe that the tenant of the Kremlin did not want to disturb, while today it is willing to make a bad face?
Going up over time you can read very significant figures: they are the knots that came to the comb. Germany in 2014 had a hidden debt of at least 600 billion euros: That of the Länder who given the federal structure does not emerge in the German budget and therefore does not count for the purposes of the Maastricht parameters. Those debts are still all there. As constant is the submerged economy that is worth 13 percent of GDP (about 520 billion) and hides with mini-jobs (also Germans practice poor work) about 20 percent unemployment. Finally, Germany, unlike all the other European states, continues to keep the banking system in public hands – Andrea Orcel knows well who with Unicredit has dared to climb Commerzbank – with the Landers who control about 45 percent of the credit. The “regional” institutes subtracted from the ECB supervision have 700 billion in the belly in the abdominal credits. These critical issues that the locomotive of Europe kept hidden as he made the big voice first with Italy forced to insert the budget draw in the Constitution – and now we are the only ones to have it – they were known ten years ago. Catherine Mann – then chief economist of the organization for economic cooperation and development – warned: demographic aging, excessive emphasis on exports, the low growth of productivity and the poor internal demand, are nodes that the Federal Republic must face and resolve. Nothing has been done and so Merkel has always rejected the objections for the commercial surplus to the detriment of the other nations of the old continent.
For 15 years Germany has been having roofs by keeping them constantly above 8 percent of its GDP. Has accumulated a surplus of over two thousand billion euros. A study by the Catholic University explains that in 2005 Berlin made the reform of the labor market by lowering wages, depressed the internal demand with tax measures, took advantage of the convergence of interest rates between the states belonging to the euro to increase exports. Still in 2024 Germany closed with a commercial surplus of 245 billion, almost half of the United States, which justifies the aggression of Donald Trump to Europe. In China last year Berlin sold 97 billion euros.
But today the trend reversed: in 2023 Germany imported about 40 percent more than 2019 from China. The three “fundamental” of the German model are in crisis: there is no longer the low -cost energy – Berlin despite the penalties still 55 percent of the gas from Russia, but its industries now pay 21 cents to the kilowattora against the 8.4 of the Americans or the Chinese – there are no longer record exports, therefore the von der leyen makes a large voice beyond the due with Trump, but above all the industrial myth. For three years the German economy has not grown and in the last two years (GDP falling from 0.3 and 0.4 percent) has been in recession. Industrial production has collapsed by 2.2 and 4.5 percent in the last two years and the main fault is of the car crossed by the European Green Deal to which the von der Leyen wants to put a patch with the construction of the tanks. However, the figures of the car industry are merciless: exports of the Federal Republic to China, its first customer, halved by descending to 1.2 million cars. Last year the Asian giant sold five million cars to the Germans. The investments, moreover, are at the pole due to the exasperated penalty policy imposed for three decades by the then finance minister Wolfgang Schauble, the one who claimed the fall of the Berlusconi government in 2011 and has hungry Greece.
Today the president of the Bundesbank Joachim Nagel insists: at least 220 billion must be invested from here to 2030. But in 2024 the first 50 companies fired 60 thousand people and, today, four out of 10 companies report redundancies. According to the estimates of the food counter of Andreas Steppuhn in the country there is a poor every seven inhabitants – the total touches 12 million – and since the beginning of the war in Ukraine the assisted from the desk have increased by 50 percent to 1.6 million. According to social services there are at least half a million Germans who live on the street, in Berlin there are eight thousand “homeless” who now protest. At least 250 thousand accommodations are missing. In the former DDR the per capita income is still 30 percent lower than the average. This is also explained by the success of alternatives Für Deutschland with Alice Weidel, the leader who preaches an autarchic Germany outside the euro. Its electoral success is linked to social marginality: in the face of an official unemployment rate of 6, 2 percent and an average income of 24,415 euros where Afd triumphs, unemployment is above 9 percent and the income is under 19 thousand euros. With these premises, Germany is rearmed to the teeth, abandons the penalty policy, but continues to impose it with the stability pact of other countries, he wants the war of duties to defend his exports to the detriment of others. But perhaps the time has come to redo the accounts, to find that Berlin his made up.
