Germany on the wall. They have to reinvent everything

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Germany on the wall. They have to reinvent everything

There was something very symbolic about the commotion around the village of Lützerath. Let us remind you that this town in the west of the country is to disappear from the face of the earth to make more space for a coal mine belonging to the RWE concern. Thousands of people protested against the razing of the village to the ground Greta Thunberg in the lead. Eventually, the police forcibly removed the activists.

Can we say that big business has defeated the demonstrators in Lützerath? The activists certainly won this image-wise battle. The internet was full of support for the demonstrators. Police officers who wanted to chase away the demonstrators, and got stuck in the mud, also conquered the Internet – but they became rather a symbol of a poorly functioning, not very decisive and stumbling state.

The German police had a clear problem with removing activists in Lützerath

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MICHAEL PROBST / East News

The dispute over Lützerath resembles a wider conflict in Germany. The “old” industry wants to develop, often without looking back, but young people stand up to it. For them, environmental issues are a priority – and large industrial concerns are often regarded as simply the enemy. This was clearly seen recently at the prestigious Technical University of Berlin. The Volkswagen concern was the sponsor of the library there. This began to be a problem for students who considered it an unacceptable marriage of science and business. So they occupied the library. The rector finally gave in and announced the end of cooperation with VW. So the automotive giant no longer sponsors the library.

Cars are generally the main enemy of young, eco-friendly Germans. Recently, not a day goes by that activists from the organization “The Last Generation” do not block roads or highways in this country. Sometimes it leads to tragedy – in November in Berlin, the ambulance did not reach the cyclist on time after the accident because of the blockade. The woman died. Activists, however, do not intend to change the form of protest. They recognize that cars are leading us to a climate catastrophe, so they must be fought by all means possible. Even sawing off the branch on which the whole country sits.

A policewoman tries to remove an activist who is blocking a road in Berlin

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AP/East News

If not industry, then what? Germany in a trap

Not only activists, but also the government in Berlin are fighting against the automotive industry. Last summer, fighting against high prices and car traffic, a cheap summer train ticket was introduced. For just 9 euros a month, you could travel by train all over the country. Cheap Ticket was perhaps Scholz’s clearest success in his year in government. Official figures say that the Germans bought 52 million cheap tickets. Soon, a continuation of the project will be launched – a ticket for 49 euros.

Many analyzes indicated that cheap tickets achieved yet another success – Germans began to leave their cars in car parks and garages. But by fighting cars, Berlin is fighting itself. It is a truism to say that the German economy is based on the automotive industry. The industry employs nearly 800,000 people there. people and generates annual turnover exceeding EUR 410 billion. Even if the Germans completely gave up cars, this industry would probably survive in this country – after all, most cars are exported. Only for young Germans, it is often not only the car industry that is the enemy, in fact, industry in general.

Meanwhile, most of the most valuable companies on the German stock exchange are “hard”, industrial companies – automotive giants Mercedes-Benz, BWM, Volkswagen or Daimler Trucks, chemical concerns BASF or Henkel and energy Siemens Energy.

The government, in which social democrats and greens play the first violin, is doing a lot to curb the power of industrial concerns. In the long run, however, it is difficult to imagine which companies would “take over” the German economy. When it comes to the modern technology sector, Germany is definitely not among the world leaders. The largest company here is SAP, which produces software for business. Several successful startups were also born in this country, such as the Zalando sales platform. However, all this is not enough to pull such a large economy. There are many voices that the Germans simply slept through the digital revolution. The digital infrastructure is poor, the public sector is still largely “analog”. And everyone who visits Germany knows how big a problem even paying with a card can be in many shops or restaurants.

“The country has been developing for a very long time, our companies have brought hundreds of billions of euros in profits. How much of it have we invested wisely? Well, not much. This is the source of the current crisis.” – recently wrote the renowned weekly “Der Spiegel”. The newspaper referred to the project of the well-known German concern Evonik, which has invested in a large development center that employs 300 people, works on the latest technological solutions and cooperates with the best universities in the world. The center, however, was established in … Allentown in America. In its native Germany, as the newspaper suggests, such a facility would not have a chance to spread its wings.

— Structural changes are needed in virtually all sectors of the economy – said economist Marcel Fratzscher in an interview with “Spiegel”.

Looking at the data, you can understand it. In almost every respect, Germany is becoming an increasingly difficult country to live in. For example, problems with the availability of housing in large cities are increasing. Renting a square meter of an apartment in Munich already costs over 20 euros a month. This means that a 50-meter apartment costs over PLN 4.7 thousand there. zloty. Berlin is slightly cheaper (over EUR 17 per sq m), but also very expensive. The media across the Oder River have been alarming for a long time that without cheaper apartments, young people will not be attracted to German cities. And without young, developing people, it will be difficult for Germany to win the technological race.

Even the railway, considered a bright spot of Scholz’s rule, is sharply criticized by the media outside the Oder River. Because the railway infrastructure is incomparably worse than that in France or Italy. In addition, German trains are notoriously late. In 2021, only 75 percent. long-distance trains arrived on time, according to official figures from Deutsche Bahn.

The rest of the article is below the video

The Germans must finally arm themselves

Our neighbor wants to eat his cake and have it too. Germany would like to maintain its standard of living, but at the same time become very green. This will be difficult to achieve while remaining an industrial powerhouse. Until recently, this seemed a very ambitious task, but perhaps also feasible. Everything changed on February 24, 2022.

It turned out then that the model of the country built by Angela Merkel for years simply did not make sense. According to Business Insider, an expert in Germany, prof. Arkadiusz Stempin, the former chancellor, has entered the typical path for the German elites “ordered the calm administration of policy, appeasing public opinion, and removing internal conflicts from the agenda.” As a result, there was no room for more ambitious changes and reforms.

“Merkel was pessimistic about the readiness of the Germans to take on some major change, such as the construction of green energy infrastructure,” says Stempin, author of the book Angela Merkel. Empress of Europe.

The result of this policy was, in turn, dependence on Russian gas. – The business centered around her party, the CDU, and the wing of the SPD, which brings together workers, pushed for the import of cheap gas. LNG gas would be much more expensive, and there was no infrastructure to import it, believes Prof. Arkadiusz Stempin.

After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the Germans had several shocks at once – they had to quickly become independent of raw materials from Russia (although not everyone wanted it anyway) and found themselves on the political map of Europe again. Fresh in February, Chancellor Olaf Scholz coped with these challenges rather poorly.

Even more shocking was that Berlin had to start thinking about its own security. For years, the Budneswehr was not so much underinvested as it was becoming an army to respond to minor crises rather than take part in any war. From Berlin’s perspective, it was unimaginable. The Germans were used to the fact that after World War II it was the Americans who invested in Germany’s security through NATO. Other countries of the Alliance rather liked this model – they considered that, remembering the 1930s, it was better to pay for Germany’s security than to allow them to build a powerful army.

Today, Germany finds itself in a world where military investment is urgently needed. Scholz announced a “historical change” here. Germany is to have a powerful army and modern equipment, including American F-35 aircraft. But so far in the big plans, little has come of it.

As far as aid for Ukraine is concerned, Germany is pilloried by its allies, including the US. Olaf Scholz doesn’t seem like a leader who can handle so many crises at once. However, his deputy Robert Habeck criticizes him on almost every key issue.

It looks like the coming decades will be increasingly difficult for Germany. Unless the country surprises the world again. And he surprised me many times. After all, BioNTech – a small German company founded by immigrants from Turkey, helped us deal with the COVID-19 pandemic like no other.

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