Its problems are deep-rooted, knotty and show little sign of being fixed
The 2020s are shaping up to be very different, and not just because the national football team is faltering. Alternative für Deutschland, a far-right populist party, is polling at 20%. Germans are unhappy with their government. Most worrying, Germany’s vaunted economic model and state look unable to provide the growth and public services people have come to expect.
Ministers are mulling how to respond. The Greens, part of a coalition government with the Social Democrats and, a pro-business party, want to spend €30bn on subsidising electricity for industrial use and funding green building and social housing. “The current weakness of the construction sector could indeed be used by the public sector to build more instead,” agrees Monika Schnitzer, head of the German Council of Economic Experts, an official body.
The original plan, dreamed up in the glorious 2010s, was to replace nuclear energy with renewables and cheap Russian gas. Neither now looks possible. Russian gas will not flow to Germany any time soon. Meanwhile, Mrs Merkel often preferred to spend on pensions, rather than on renewables.ish hostility to strengthening the grid, especially in the power-hungry south, has not helped.
Yet making it easier for parents to work full-time would clash with Germany’s traditional family model, and schools and nurseries are already short-staffed. Once, such problems would have been circumvented by attracting workers from eastern Europe, using the lure of higher Western wages. But many economies to the east are booming, and their labour markets are also tight.
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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