Observations

Is the EU's top economy now becoming "the Sick Man of Europe"?

Many readers will remember when the UK was referred as "the Sick Man of Europe". No longer. Now it is the UK's economy which is growing while Germany's is stagnant or in decline.

Germany's problems aren't limited to its economic woes. Its three-party coalition government is in an increasingly fractious state. It was always going to be a challenge for the Socialists (SPD), the Greens, and the conservative Free Democrats (FDP) to find enough accommodations to govern Germany effectively.

In July they managed to cobble together a compromise federal budget for next year. Since then, however, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (of the minority FDP partner in the coalition) has said this deal must be renegotiated, as it is likely to be over-ruled by Germany's all-important Constitutional Court. In November 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the government was not allowed to reallocate around €60 billion from a fund set up to mitigate the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and instead use it to subsidize the transition to a green economy. Now Lindner warns that the same will happen with plans to re-use part of the fund set up to mitigate the effects of exploding gas prices.

Germany marches Right

Since the last German Federal general election, the sentiment of the German people seems to have been shifting steadily and significantly to the Right. In the EU Parliament elections early last month, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD socialist candidates could only muster 13.9% of the vote. This was their worst result in a national vote in Germany for more than 100 years. At the same time, voter support for the second-largest party in his coalition government, the Greens, dropped by nearly half. Meanwhile, support for the right-wing AfD has soared and this took them into second place, above the Chancellor's own party.

It is not in the UK's interests to see Germany in the doldrums, as it is still an important trading partner. Our report merely demonstrates that Brexit Britain can hold its head up high, despite all the attempts by those major parts of the media who are anti-Brexit and who find it so difficult to report good news for our country.

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