大约四分之一个世纪前（1999 年 6 月），影响力巨大的英国商业杂志《经济学人》曾宣称德国是“欧洲病夫”。德媒世界报表示，“这一形容在当时被认为非常贴切，德国花了很多年才扭转局面。”
而现在，德国再次登上了《经济学人》头版——“德国又是欧洲病夫了吗？” 好在这次加了一个问号，结论多少没那么确定了。
20世纪90年代末，德国的疲软状态持续了数年。自1995年以来，德国经济增速平均比其他欧元区国家低1个百分点。
这在一定程度上是由于特殊效应造成的，正如《经济学人》当时写道：“统一后的繁荣已经崩溃，当时新兴国家的危机导致德国出口业的需求下降。”
“但这都是表面问题”，根本问题是，《经济学人》杂志当时形容得非常贴切：“不透明且低效的税收制度、膨胀的社会体系和过高的劳动力成本。” 德媒形容“当时的科尔政府完全处于僵化状态”。而上面的形容放在当今的德国也十分适用。
几年后，在创纪录的失业数字推动下，施罗德“2010议程”的改革最终使德国摆脱了危机，正如《经济学人》所言，德国迎来了“黄金时代”。“不仅列车准点运行，而且凭借世界领先的技术，德国成为出口大国。”
而现在，德国在经济发展趋势方面再次落后于所有其他国家。2017年以来，德国经济增长速度远低于其他西方国家的平均水平，而且看不到任何改善的迹象。
国际货币基金组织预测德国今年经济衰退0.3% 。虽然并不十分糟糕，但德国是唯一一个经济衰退的国家。
德媒报道继续说道，“不仅如此，德国的公司氛围也很差劲。Ifo商业景气指数近期再次下跌至87.3点。这是只有在严重衰退时才会达到的水平。”
总而言之，《经济学人》认为，“德国今天的情况与 1999 年不可比，但二者的相似之处是不可否认的。一方面，这次德国经济有一些特殊的影响---能源危机和中国经济疲软对德国的影响尤其大，但结构性问题在今天仍然更为重要。”（不是？我说？德国这两年不是一直喊着减少对中国的依赖吗？你管我疲不疲软呢？）
据《经济学人》分析，“平衡预算”多年来阻碍了重要的国家投资。德国一直因出口成功沾沾自喜，从而导致投资太少。多年来，德国IT 投资在经济产出中的比重仅为美国或法国的一半。
另一方面，是德国严重的官僚主义影响甚巨：想在德国办理一份营业执照需要120天，是经合组织国家平均时间的两倍。
最后的重要原因是，德国越来越缺乏工人。
《经济学人》呼吁德国制定“议程2030”。德国必须接受并使用新技术，尤其是在管理方面。审批流程必须加快，德国也必须放弃对“平衡预算”的迷恋。“以放弃投资来遏制政府支出是错误的做法。”（遏制政府支出的手段是限制投资，但是对难民补贴绝不手软）
将技术工人引入德国十分重要，迫在眉睫。尽管德国移民法已经放宽，但签证发放速度仍然太慢，“而且比起专业人士，德国似乎更欢迎难民”。
与1999年一样，《经济学人》很好地反映了大多数经济学家的情绪。华宝投行首席经济学家卡斯滕·克鲁德 (Carsten Klude) 表示：“德国显然存在结构性问题，因此需要采取结构性解决方案。”
克鲁德表示，“关闭36座核电站，然后以高边际成本生产基本电力，或者在国外购买昂贵电力。“ 这当然不是一项经济政治杰作。此外，依赖中国作为出口市场、依赖俄罗斯获取能源也并不是好主意。”
但事已至此，向前看很重要。和《经济学人》一样，克鲁德也呼吁精简官僚机构，快速数字化，以便使德国政府尽快能够达到国际标准。他还呼吁“对基础设施进行大规模投资”。
此外，这个专家克鲁德又给出了高见，“德国人必须延长工作时间，除了更晚退休，每周工作时长也应该增加。” 克鲁德进一步指出：“移民的劳动力市场融合度必须提高，教育必须恢复到原来的水平，税收和关税必须下降。” 满屏的“必须”，还好他只是经济学家。
德国商业银行首席经济学家约尔格·克莱默也认为高税收、过多监管和高能源价格是德国目前的核心问题，当然还有劳动力短缺。“造成这种情况的原因之一是国家对健康、护理和教育等相关领域对劳动力的需求不断增加。”如今，上述行业的就业人数比十年前增加了近 200 万人。
政府也必须改变工作方式。“《建筑能源法》等不成熟的政策加剧了公司和家庭的不确定性，” 他补充说。
基民盟新任秘书长林尼曼（Carsten Linnemann）对“议程2030”的说法极度认同。他说：“根据国际货币基金组织的预测，我们不仅是欧洲病夫，而且是世界病夫。”
“所有其他国家都在增长。欧盟已经提出了紧急计划，但这还不够。我们需要一个总体概念。我们要在接下来的几周内提出这个概念。”
具体来说，林尼曼首先要求流动性。其次能源价格也必须尽快降低。另外，数十万即将退休的工人，应该允许他们赚取免税外快——例如最高每月2000欧元的免税额度。林尼曼还建议进行试点，要求德国各县在两年内减少官僚主义和过度监管。
“我们德国现在迫切需要改变心态”，林尼曼解释说。“我们现在的处境就和90年代末一样糟糕。”
1997年4月，时任总统罗曼·赫尔佐格（Roman Herzog）在一次演讲中批评统一后的德国经济动力丧失、社会瘫痪和精神压抑。他在演讲中说到：“必须叫醒德国”。
这番演说随后与继任的联邦总理施罗德（Gerhard Schröder）于2003年3月宣布的2010年议程挂钩，联邦政府随后对德国的劳动力市场和社会制度进行了强有力的改革。
林尼曼指责联邦政府和总理朔尔茨没有制定解决当前问题的计划。“我对他没有太多指望，但至少应该为德国未来三到五年内做好安排。”
然而，不管外界如何看衰德国，德国总理朔尔茨都并不被影响分毫，甚至有一分不解。他并不认为德国经济有什么问题。在一次线下活动中他表示，德国是一个有未来的工业国家，应该杜绝悲观主义。
“我们将成为欧洲半导体的生产基地”。关于去工业化的说法根本不符合事实。
当被问及德国经济衰退时他表示：“人们谈论的困难与德国经济无关。事实是，德国有比以往任何时候都多的员工参加了社会保险。联邦政府知道自己想要走向何方。如果海外出口再次回升，就将再次带动德国经济增长。”
正可谓，“不管外面如何风雨飘摇，我的内心自是岿然不动”。
Is Germany once again the sick man of Europe?
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/08/17/is-germany-once-again-the-sick-man-of-europe?
Its ills are different from 1999. But another stiff dose of reform is still needed
Aug 17th 2023
Nearly twenty-five years ago this newspaper called Germany the sick man of the euro. The combination of reunification, a sclerotic job market and slowing export demand all plagued the economy, forcing unemployment into double digits. Then a series of reforms in the early 2000s ushered in a golden age. Germany became the envy of its peers. Not only did the trains run on time but, with its world-beating engineering, the country also stood out as an exporting powerhouse. However, while Germany has prospered, the world has kept on turning. As a result, Germany has once again started to fall behind.
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Europe’s biggest economy has gone from a growth leader to a laggard. Between 2006 and 2017 it outperformed its large counterparts and kept pace with America. Yet today it has just experienced its third quarter of contraction or stagnation and may end up being the only big economy to shrink in 2023. The problems lie not only in the here and now. According to the imf, Germany will grow more slowly than America, Britain, France and Spain over the next five years, too.
To be sure, things are not as alarming as they were in 1999. Unemployment today is around 3%; the country is richer and more open. But Germans increasingly complain that their country is not working as well as it should. Four out of five tell pollsters that Germany is not a fair place to live. Trains now run so serially behind the clock that Switzerland has barred late ones from its network. After being stranded abroad for the second time this summer as her ageing official plane malfunctioned, Annalena Baerbock, the foreign minister, has aborted a trip to Australia.
For years Germany’s outperformance in old industries papered over its lack of investment in new ones. Complacency and an obsession with fiscal prudence led to too little public investment, and not just in Deutsche Bahn and the Bundeswehr. Overall, the country’s investment in information technology as a share of gdp is less than half that in America and France. Bureaucratic conservatism also gets in the way. Obtaining a licence to operate a business takes 120 days—twice as long as the oecd average. Added to this are worsening geopolitics, the difficulty of eliminating carbon emissions and the travails of an ageing population.
The geopolitics mean that manufacturing may no longer be the cash cow it used to be. Of all the large Western economies, Germany is the most exposed to China. Last year trade between the two amounted to $314bn. That relationship was once governed by the profit motive; now things are more complicated. In China German carmakers are losing the battle for market share against home-grown competitors. And in more sensitive areas, as the West “de-risks” its ties with China, some may be severed altogether. Meanwhile, a scramble for advanced manufacturing and robust supply chains is unleashing a torrent of subsidies to foster home-grown industry that will either threaten German firms or demand subsidies inside the European Union.
Another difficulty comes from the energy transition. Germany’s industrial sector uses nearly twice as much energy as the next-biggest in Europe, and its consumers have a much bigger carbon footprint than those in France or Italy. Cheap Russian gas is no longer an option and the country has, in a spectacular own goal, turned away from nuclear power (see Europe section). A lack of investment in grids and a sluggardly permit system are hobbling the transition to cheap renewable energy, threatening to make manufacturers less competitive.
Increasingly, too, Germany lacks the talent it needs. A baby boom after the second world war means that 2m workers, on net, will retire over the next five years. Although the country has attracted almost 1.1m Ukrainian refugees, many are children and non-working women who may soon return home. Already, two-fifths of employers say they are struggling to find skilled workers. That is not just grumbling: the state of Berlin cannot fill even half of its teaching vacancies with qualified staff.
For Germany to thrive in a more fragmented, greener and ageing world, its economic model will need to adapt. Yet whereas high unemployment forced Gerhard Schröder’s coalition into action in the 1990s, the alarm bells are easier to ignore this time. Few in today’s government, made up of the Social Democrats, the liberal Free Democrats and the Greens, admit to the scale of the task. Even if they did, the coalition is so fractious that the parties would struggle to agree on a remedy. Moreover, Alternative für Deutschland, a far-right populist party, is polling at 20% nationally and may win some state elections next year. Few in government will propose radical change for fear of playing into its hands.
The temptation may therefore be to stick with the old ways of doing things. But that would not bring back Germany’s heyday. Nor would it quell the onrush of challenges to the status quo. China will continue to develop and compete, and de-risking, decarbonisation and demography cannot simply be wished away.
Instead of running scared, politicians must look ahead, by fostering new firms, infrastructure and talent. Embracing technology would be a gift to new firms and industries. A digitised bureaucracy would do wonders for smaller firms that lack the capacity to fill out reams of paperwork. Further permit reform would help ensure that infrastructure gets built speedily and to budget. Money also matters. Too often infrastructure has suffered as the government has made a fetish of its balanced-budget rules. Although Germany cannot spend as freely as it might have in the 2010s, when interest rates were low, forgoing investment as a way of reining in excess spending is a false economy.
Agenda 2030
Just as important will be attracting new talent. Germany has liberalised its immigration rules, but the visa process is still glacial and Germany is better at welcoming refugees than professionals. Attracting more skilled immigrants could even nurture home-grown talent, if it helped deal with the chronic shortage of teachers. In a country of coalition governments and cautious bureaucrats, none of this will be easy. Yet two decades ago, Germany pulled off a remarkable transformation to extraordinary effect. It is time for another visit to the health farm. ■
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This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Sick man once more?"
Germany: The return of the 'sick man' of Europe?
The German economy is treading water, with no improvement in sight. The multiple crises of recent years have exposed the weaknesses of the country's business model.
It was just before the turn of the millennium that the British business magazine The Economist passed a verdict on the German economy, referring to the country as the sick man of Europe. Such an assessment served as a wake-up call for German politics, which, still intoxicated by the economically strong years after reunification, had been dragging its feet on reforms. The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder then reformed the labor market, which finally paid off: In 2014, a group of economists from Berlin and London wrote that Germany had developed"From sick man of Europe to an economic superstar."
The German economy is again struggling. For two quarters in a row, its economic output has declined — something economists label a "technical recession." In the most recent quarter, Germany's gross domestic product (GDP) has stagnated at the level of the previous quarter, and all the important economic indicators show a decline.
"Germany's economic situation is darkening," was the conclusion of the president of the ifo Institute, the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Clemens Fuest. The ifo Institute surveys 9,000 executives each month about the current state of their businesses and their expectations for the next six months. The resulting ifo Business Climate Index (July 2023) has fallen for the third month in a row. The ifo researchers expect Germany's GDP to decline again during the current quarter.
The chemical industry, which is considered a leading indicator for the economy, expects sales to fall by 14% this year.Image: Ronald Wittek/dpa/picture alliance
The situation is also clear to Commerzbank chief economist Jörg Krämer: "Unfortunately, there is no improvement in sight," Krämer told the Reuters news agency. "The worldwide interest rate increases are taking their toll, especially since German businesses are already unsettled due to the eroding quality of their location."
Industry is no longer the showpiece
Compared with other industrialized nations, Germany is performing exceptionally poorly — and according to an estimate by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be the only large country to have a shrinking economic output. The country's industrial sector, the showpiece of its economy, is causing the most concern. It accounts for a relatively large portion of Germany's gross value added (GVA), about 24%, and hasbeen suffering through a global economic slump. The engineering and automotive sectors, which are heavily reliant on exports, are particularly feeling the effects of foreign customers holding back.
Companies in the manufacturing industries are still saving themselves thanks to the large backlog of orders that accumulated during the COVID-19 pandemic because of signifcant supply chain problems. But these orders will soon be fulfilled — and new ones are coming in more sparsely: From March until May, the number of orders received was just over 6% down on the three months prior.
'Uncertainty' stalls German economy 03:47
Germany's economic decline has many causes. One of them is the monetary policy of central banks. The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and others want to curb inflation via significant interest rate increases. That makes credit more expensive for companies and consumers, which has a slowing effect on another important economic sector in Germany — construction — as well as dampening companies' willingness to invest.
This "stalling" of economic dynamism is the whole point of increasing interest rates. But other Eurozone countries, such as France or Spain, have coped with this much better. "All of our European neighbors have higher economic momentum," stated Moritz Schularick, the new President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
So, structural problems are holding Germany back. The country's economic model used to be based on importing cheap — primarily Russian — energy and cheap raw materials and semi-finished goods, processing them and exporting them as high-value, expensive goods. But that is not working anymore. The multiple crises of recent years have ruthlessly laid bare Germany's weaknesses. Energy-intensive enterprises are suffering under the high energy costs, and those who have relocated their production are not coming back. But Germany's problems do not end there.
The auto industry — one of Germany's flagship sectors — is seeing a decline: Volkswagen, for example, recently had to readjust its sales forecast againImage: Hendrik Schmidt/dpa/picture alliance
How to turn things around?
A current study by DZ Bank, the second-largest bank in Germany, has concluded that small and medium-sized enterprises, commonly described as the "backbone of the German economy," are in danger.
The authors note a veritable cocktail of locational disadvantages: Aside from the energy prices, they listed the latent skills shortage, but also excessive bureaucracy, high taxes, and ailing infrastructure, including struggles in implementing digitalization. In addition, Germany has an aging population. "Large parts of our economy are lacking confidence that investments in Germany as a business location, in light of the high costs and in some parts contradictory regulations, will pay off," Peter Adrian, president of the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry recently told German news agency dpa.
Kiel Institute (ifW) President Moritz Schularick outlined a possible way out of this dilemma in a piece on the website of his Institute: "If Germany does not want to become the 'sick man of Europe' once again, it must now courageously turn its attention to the growth sectors of tomorrow instead of fearfully spending billions to preserve yesterday's energy-intensive industries."
Germany must, Schularick continued, quickly address the shortcomings and missed opportunities of the past decade: "The sometimes bizarre backwardness in all things digital, the sharp decline in state capacity and public infrastructure, as well as the lack of a meaningful strategy to improve the shortage of housing and increase immigration to deal with the effects of an aging workforce."
This article was originally written in German.
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Henrik Böhme Business?editor focusing on international trade, cars, and finance@Henrik58
