Germany news: Economy narrowly avoids 3rd year of recession

Germany and other EU countries were deploying very small numbers of troops in a symbolic but pointed move to Greenland. DW's Nina Haase explains why.

 

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has defended the Mercosur free trade agreement between the European Union and Latin American countries.

Speaking at the opening of Berlin’s Green Week, Steinmeier acknowledged skepticism among German farmers.

"Nevertheless, in view of the economic and political developments of our time, I am convinced that now, more than ever, we need new alliances and new partners in this world full of upheaval and change," he said.

Steinmeier said Europeans must remain united and actively shape international agricultural cooperation.

The Mercosur deal, involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, has been in negotiation for 25 years. EU member states gave the green light last week, with signing expected soon in Paraguay.

A survivor of the Nazi concentration camp in Buchenwald in World War II, Raymond Renaud, has died at the age of 102. 

The eastern state of Thuringia's state chancellery and regional parliament said on Thursday that the French citizen had died the previous day. 

The mayor of Weimar, the nearest major settlement to the site of the camp, Peter Kleine paid tribute to Renaud on the city's website. 

"Raymond Renaud showed us that memory can be warm, human and caring," Kleine said. "Despite everything that was done to him in Buchenwald, he remained a fun-loving, humorous and gracious man, who gave others courage."

Renaud had participated in ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the camp's liberation by US forces last April, and was an honorary citizen of Weimar.

"His death leaves a great hole. But what he leaves behind, his attitude, his heartiness, his humanity will be carried forward," he said. "The city of Weimar bows in gratitude and grief before Raymond Renaud. His life and testimony will remain part of the moral memory of this city." 

Born in Palinges in Burgundy in 1923, Renaud was a member of the communist youth. He was arrested for carrying and distributing leaflets in then-occupied France in 1942 and sentenced to 13 months imprisonment. After the Vichy authorities handed him over to Germany, he was transported to Buchenwald and stayed there until its liberation.

Thuringia's state premier Mario Voigt honored Renaud, saying, "He told his story, fought against forgetting, and made it clear where hatred, anti-Semitism and authoritarian thinking leads." 

Injury-hit German basketball star Franz Wagner will make his return to the Orlando Magic starting line-up in Thursday evening's special NBA game against the Memphis Grizzlies in Wagner's hometown, Berlin. 

The younger Wagner brother, whose sibling Moritz is also on the Orlando Magic squad, had missed about a month with an ankle injury prior to Thursday night's game. Wagner, 24, grew up in the capital and played professionally for Alba Berlin before joining the NBA.

Moritz Wagner himself is on the road to recovery, after a cruciate ligament tear put him out of action for more than a year. He made his return to action on Sunday.

The NBA has held several special regular season games in foreign countries in recent years to try to drum up more interest, but it's the first time such a game is being played in Germany. 

The Magic's roster has a total of three German national team players, also including Brazilian-German forward Tristan da Silva. 

Lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament have voted in favor of a draft law that seeks to enable faster and simpler weapons procurement and expansion of military facilities for the Bundeswehr.

The Defense Ministry had touted the proposals as a quantum leap, arguing they were necessary to streamline acquisition and expansion, particularly given Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The draft law calls out Russia as "the largest and most immediate threat to security" in the European-Atlantic area, and says that this threat diminishing cannot be anticipated. "The comments of the Russian leadership signal much more that Russia's war goals extend beyond Ukraine," it says. 

The draft law, which still must clear other hurdles before becoming official, foresees enabling the Bundeswehr to issue award public contracts more quickly and with fewer hurdles. In emergency cases it can even circumvent a typical tender and bidding process.

The proposal was opposed by the Greens and the socialist Left Party, but approved by the governing Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, and the largest opposition group, the Alternative for Germany. 

Economy Minister Katharina Reiche welcomed the law's progression, saying in an interview with the RND newspaper group that "decisions must be taken more quickly in a world of growing crises." 

Hamburg's Volksparkstadion stadium roof is sound and HSV can entertain Borussia Mönchengladbach on Saturday in the Bundesliga, the club confirmed on Thursday. 

The match had been in doubt ever since Hamburg's Tuesday match at home against Bayer Leverkusen had to be called off.

As heavy snows in northern Germany rapidly thawed on Tuesday, excess water built up on the stadium roof and did not drain properly, forcing the cancellation of the game at short notice. 

 "After the structural engineer gave the roof the all-clear yesterday, 12 high-altitude rescue workers were back on duty the whole time," HSV spokesman Philipp Langer said on Thursday afternoon at the press conference for the Gladbach game. "In some places, we had a point load of 350 kilograms per square meter up there. But now safety can be guaranteed."

Coach Merlin Polzin also voiced relief, saying that after the Leverkusen game was called off, he was glad "that we do not have to wait too long, until we can host a game in the Volkspark again." 

Police on Thursday expanded a search for an 8-year-old boy, whose school first reported him missing on Wednesday, including a renewed search of the school premises that came up empty. 

A helicopter and search dog were part of the efforts to locate the child. 

Police said the boy was dropped off outside the Weißfrauenschule in central Frankfurt on Wednesday morning "did not go to school afterwards." On Thursday morning, a school bag that most likely belonged to the boy was found nearby, a police spokesman said. 

Officers were reviewing CCTV footage from the area, and searching the entirety of the city center. Waterways police were also searching the Main River, which passes just a few hundred meters from the school.

Police said they were also following standard procedures for such cases, such as searching places the boy was known to spend time and checking with relatives. 

How is the news of a German military deployment to Greenland going down among the political parties in Berlin?

DW has been canvassing opinions in parliament. The largest opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), calls it a reactionary move.

Rüdiger Lucassen, the AfD's defense policy spokesman told us: "It has no military effect and, in my view, only very limited political benefit. So far, I cannot discern any objective on the part of the federal government."

"Does it want to impress or deter the US, or is it even a political signal to the Americans that it is ready to jointly secure Greenland? I would welcome the latter."

At the other end of the political spectrum, the Left Party, says it "sends the wrong signal."

Ulrich Thoden the party's defense policy spokesman, said the debate over Greenland was about raw minerals, and therefore Germany needed to use diplomacy and economic power influence to make clear that "Trump's annexation plans, which are completely insane, must be stopped." In that respect, he said, sending armed forces is "problematic."

Within the ranks of the governing parties there appears to be broad approval.

Thomas Röwekamp, a member of the conservative CDU who chairs the defense committee in parliament, told DW: "It is about finding a joint response within NATO to the military threat to this geostrategically important region, and I believe it makes sense for Germany to participate."

Questionnaires to assess suitability and motivation for serving in the German military are being sent to 18-year-olds from Thursday, a Bundeswehr spokeswoman has confirmed to the dpa new agency.

Under a law passed late last year to bring back military service — initially on a voluntary basis — people who have turned 18 will automatically receive a QR code for the online questionnaire, accompanied by a brochure and legal information.

Males will be legally obliged to complete the questionnaire, while doing so is voluntary for women.

The new military service law, which went into force on January 1, was introduced in response to the threat posed by Russian aggression.

Under its provisions, the armed forces hope to raise personnel levels from 180,000 to 260,000, while a reserve force is envisaged to reach 200,000.   
 

French train manufacturer Alstom said on Thursday that it had signed a contract worth about €500 million ($582 million) under which it is to supply 26 Coradia Max double-decker trains to the German rail network and maintain them for almost three decades.

The order came from the rail vehicle authority in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg and foresees delivery from mid- to late 2028.

The state's transport minister, Winfried Hermann, said the investment would "put us at the forefront in Germany with numerous new high-performance trains."

 "We are thus creating capacity for the high passenger demand of recent years," he said.

The German rail network has come under fire in recent years for its infrastructure deficiencies.

The current conservative-led federal government has vowed to rapidly improve it, earmarking some €150 billion ($174 billion) of the €500 billion in new debt that's been taken on to modernize military and public infrastructure for the rail system. 

Around 1.4 million affordable apartments are currently lacking in Germany, according to a study by the Pestel Institute released on Thursday, a shortfall deemed by its authors to have reached a record level.

The Pestel Institute's study director, Matthias Günther, said that to correct this deficit by 2030, some 400,000 apartments needed to be built per year.

He said, however, that just 200,000 were likely to be built annually in the coming years.

He said more than half of the more than 23 million households living in rented accommodation in Germany were eligible for subsidized housing but that just a million such subsidized apartments were currently available, making access to them a "lottery."

Young and elderly people were the "losers on the housing market," he said, with young people sometimes rejecting trainee positions because they found nowhere to live, while older generations were often unable to afford their previous apartment on their pensions.

Günther said disabled people were also frequently victims of an "exclusion from the housing market," and called for a quota system to be introduced for social housing.

According to Günther, the federal and state governments should not ignore the warning signals sent by the study, entitled "Soziale Wohn-Monitor" (Social Housing Monitor). 

Berlin's ruling mayor, Kai Wegner, has said in a statement that he wants to make Berlin "a model city in crisis resilience," while drawing lessons from the recent five-day power outage in the southwest of the city following an arson attack.

He said that "despite the successful management of the crisis, we must analyze honestly where we can be even besser, where we were not fast enough, where structures and responsibilities are not yet right."

 According to the newsmagazine Spiegel, Wegner, a member of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU), intends to present a five-point package of measures to this end.

They include:

• Safeguarding and reinforcing infrastructure
• Reinforcing catastrophe management
• Enhancing domestic intelligence
• Financing and redistribution
• Resilience among residents

He also called for more confidentiality regarding important infrastructure.

"We have to put an end to too much transparency," he said. "We must no long carelessly make sensitive data on our power or transport network easily accessible. That makes us vulnerable to extremists of every type."

The arson attack on a cable bridge that caused the power outage in Berlin's southwest last week is believed to have been carried out by left-wing extremists.

Wegner himself has come under fire for playing tennis for an hour on the first day of the outage, while failing to mention the fact in his initial account of events.

"In retrospect, I should have already said on Sunday that I did an hour of sport," Wegner said in his statement.

A court in the eastern German city of Halle has sentenced a 33-year-old Iraqi man to four years in prison without parole for his previous membership in the terrorist group "Islamic State" (IS).

The man, who came to Germany in 2022 to apply for asylum, saying he had left Iraq for Turkey in 2014 for fear of being forcibly recruited by IS, was said by the presiding judge to have been a member of the group from at least May 2014 to November 2016.

She said the man had had a "not insignificant role" in what she described as "perhaps the most abhorrent organization in the world," while conceding that no concrete crimes such as murder, torture or rape had been ascribed to him.

During the sentencing, the court noted that the man is said to no longer support the terrorist group.

The verdict can be appealed within a week.

German federal police officers are cracking down harder on vessels transporting sanctioned Russian oil, German media reported on Thursday.

They say that a number of Russian ships have been stopped from sailing through German waters.

According to an exclusive report from the Tageschau website of public service broadcaster ARD, Western authorities have previously seen themselves constrained by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, under which all ships are to be granted "the right of innocent passage" through territorial waters of another nation.

However, that convention also makes it mandatory to carry the flag of a particular country. If they do not, or carry a false flag, law experts have recently argued, they forego the right to freely traverse territorial waters.

Russia has been using some 500 dilapidated vessels that are mostly unflagged or falsely flagged to help put its oil on the market at much higher prices that would be allowed under Western sanctions over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Some of the ships are also suspected of carrying out espionage and sabotage.

Germany's air traffic control authority, the Flight Safety Office (DFS), said on Thursday that it was recommending that planes avoid Iranian airspace until February 10 amid warnings of a possible US military intervention in Iran.

A spokesman told the AFP news agency in a statement that the adives had been issued "on the instruction of the Transport Ministry."

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened Iran's leadership following the brutal suppression of anti-government protests aimed at Iran's clerical regime, but it remains unclear what option he will choose if he takes action.