As many as 23 of Berlin’s new “green” electric buses stopped running during the recent cold snap and had to be replaced with diesel alternatives, German media has reported. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, Berlin’s main public transport operator, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), last week’s low temperatures caused problems with the electric vehicles batteries, with […]
German media outlets have described the ruling as “politically explosive”, with the court ruling regional politicians had themselves breached German law by mandating the lockdown.
There was no population growth at all in Germany in 2020, for the first time since 2011. It wasn’t because fewer babies were born, though the birth rate did drop slightly in 2020. Normally, Germany’s population growth results solely from positive net immigration. In fact, without immigration, the population would have actually been shrinking since 1972. Covid-19 restrictions […]
Angela Merkel has said the country could need 10 more weeks of hard lockdown measures in order to overcome the situation.
Not especially newsworthy in and of itself, but certainly newsworthy in terms of what it might mean for Ireland: Chancellor Angela Merkel has told lawmakers in her conservative party that she expects a lockdown in Germany to curb the spread of the coronavirus to last until the start of April, top-selling Bild daily cited participants […]
Who might the next Chancellor of Germany be, with this set to be Angela Merkel’s final year in office? As a political battle rages in Germany, Dominik Michalik walks us through the candidates: We are currently just a week away from CDU’s leadership elections which will begin on the 15th of January and will last […]
It is one of the lesser known of Germany’s monstrous crimes in World War Two, but today, nonetheless, is the 79th anniversary of the massacre at Kragujavac. Two thousand, seven hundred and seventy eight Serbian men and boys were shot, in cold blood, at point blank range by German soldiers, having first been made dig […]
On the 18th of March this year a German court convicted two former London-based investment bankers for their involvement in a criminal tax fraud that has “left treasuries across Europe tens of billions of euros out of pocket.” Then in June, the same Court published an anonymised 299-page version of its decision in which it […]
In February of this year, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that an individual’s autonomy was far more important than the value of his or her life. It did this when declaring that a law prohibiting assisted suicide was unconstitutional, with the Court’s press release indicating: “The general right of personality guarantees the right […]
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water: Germany’s coronavirus R number has leapt again – from 1.79 on Saturday to 2.88 on Sunday, official figures show. The Robert Koch Institute for public health (RKI), which has been publishing the country’s COVID-19 statistics, said the new number is based on […]
Europe biggest newspaper, Germany’s Das Bild, has said the Covid-19 lockdown was a ‘huge mistake’. Critics featured in the newspaper feature said that it was important during a public crisis that people had the right to continue “warning, doubting and arguing” especially when fundamental rights of citizens were being suppressed. Prof. Klaus Püschel, a pathologist […]
The German newspaper Bild, Europe’s best selling newspaper, has put together an itemised ‘invoice’ of nearly €150 billion which it says China owes Germany for the COVID-19 pandemic. The list says that China owes Germany €27 billion for lost tourism revenue, €7.2 billion for the German film industry, and €50 billion for German SMEs. The […]