大約四分之一個世紀前（1999 年 6 月），影響力巨大的英國商業雜誌《經濟學人》曾宣稱德國是“歐洲病夫”。德媒世界報表示，“這一形容在當時被認為非常貼切，德國花了很多年才扭轉局麵。”
而現在，德國再次登上了《經濟學人》頭版——“德國又是歐洲病夫了嗎？” 好在這次加了一個問號，結論多少沒那麽確定了。
20世紀90年代末，德國的疲軟狀態持續了數年。自1995年以來，德國經濟增速平均比其他歐元區國家低1個百分點。
這在一定程度上是由於特殊效應造成的，正如《經濟學人》當時寫道：“統一後的繁榮已經崩潰，當時新興國家的危機導致德國出口業的需求下降。”
“但這都是表麵問題”，根本問題是，《經濟學人》雜誌當時形容得非常貼切：“不透明且低效的稅收製度、膨脹的社會體係和過高的勞動力成本。” 德媒形容“當時的科爾政府完全處於僵化狀態”。而上麵的形容放在當今的德國也十分適用。
幾年後，在創紀錄的失業數字推動下，施羅德“2010議程”的改革最終使德國擺脫了危機，正如《經濟學人》所言，德國迎來了“黃金時代”。“不僅列車準點運行，而且憑借世界領先的技術，德國成為出口大國。”
而現在，德國在經濟發展趨勢方麵再次落後於所有其他國家。2017年以來，德國經濟增長速度遠低於其他西方國家的平均水平，而且看不到任何改善的跡象。
國際貨幣基金組織預測德國今年經濟衰退0.3% 。雖然並不十分糟糕，但德國是唯一一個經濟衰退的國家。
德媒報道繼續說道，“不僅如此，德國的公司氛圍也很差勁。Ifo商業景氣指數近期再次下跌至87.3點。這是隻有在嚴重衰退時才會達到的水平。”
總而言之，《經濟學人》認為，“德國今天的情況與 1999 年不可比，但二者的相似之處是不可否認的。一方麵，這次德國經濟有一些特殊的影響---能源危機和中國經濟疲軟對德國的影響尤其大，但結構性問題在今天仍然更為重要。”（不是？我說？德國這兩年不是一直喊著減少對中國的依賴嗎？你管我疲不疲軟呢？）
據《經濟學人》分析，“平衡預算”多年來阻礙了重要的國家投資。德國一直因出口成功沾沾自喜，從而導致投資太少。多年來，德國IT 投資在經濟產出中的比重僅為美國或法國的一半。
另一方麵，是德國嚴重的官僚主義影響甚巨：想在德國辦理一份營業執照需要120天，是經合組織國家平均時間的兩倍。
最後的重要原因是，德國越來越缺乏工人。
《經濟學人》呼籲德國製定“議程2030”。德國必須接受並使用新技術，尤其是在管理方麵。審批流程必須加快，德國也必須放棄對“平衡預算”的迷戀。“以放棄投資來遏製政府支出是錯誤的做法。”（遏製政府支出的手段是限製投資，但是對難民補貼絕不手軟）
將技術工人引入德國十分重要，迫在眉睫。盡管德國移民法已經放寬，但簽證發放速度仍然太慢，“而且比起專業人士，德國似乎更歡迎難民”。
與1999年一樣，《經濟學人》很好地反映了大多數經濟學家的情緒。華寶投行首席經濟學家卡斯滕·克魯德 (Carsten Klude) 表示：“德國顯然存在結構性問題，因此需要采取結構性解決方案。”
克魯德表示，“關閉36座核電站，然後以高邊際成本生產基本電力，或者在國外購買昂貴電力。“ 這當然不是一項經濟政治傑作。此外，依賴中國作為出口市場、依賴俄羅斯獲取能源也並不是好主意。”
但事已至此，向前看很重要。和《經濟學人》一樣，克魯德也呼籲精簡官僚機構，快速數字化，以便使德國政府盡快能夠達到國際標準。他還呼籲“對基礎設施進行大規模投資”。
此外，這個專家克魯德又給出了高見，“德國人必須延長工作時間，除了更晚退休，每周工作時長也應該增加。” 克魯德進一步指出：“移民的勞動力市場融合度必須提高，教育必須恢複到原來的水平，稅收和關稅必須下降。” 滿屏的“必須”，還好他隻是經濟學家。
德國商業銀行首席經濟學家約爾格·克萊默也認為高稅收、過多監管和高能源價格是德國目前的核心問題，當然還有勞動力短缺。“造成這種情況的原因之一是國家對健康、護理和教育等相關領域對勞動力的需求不斷增加。”如今，上述行業的就業人數比十年前增加了近 200 萬人。
政府也必須改變工作方式。“《建築能源法》等不成熟的政策加劇了公司和家庭的不確定性，” 他補充說。
基民盟新任秘書長林尼曼（Carsten Linnemann）對“議程2030”的說法極度認同。他說：“根據國際貨幣基金組織的預測，我們不僅是歐洲病夫，而且是世界病夫。”
“所有其他國家都在增長。歐盟已經提出了緊急計劃，但這還不夠。我們需要一個總體概念。我們要在接下來的幾周內提出這個概念。”
具體來說，林尼曼首先要求流動性。其次能源價格也必須盡快降低。另外，數十萬即將退休的工人，應該允許他們賺取免稅外快——例如最高每月2000歐元的免稅額度。林尼曼還建議進行試點，要求德國各縣在兩年內減少官僚主義和過度監管。
“我們德國現在迫切需要改變心態”，林尼曼解釋說。“我們現在的處境就和90年代末一樣糟糕。”
1997年4月，時任總統羅曼·赫爾佐格（Roman Herzog）在一次演講中批評統一後的德國經濟動力喪失、社會癱瘓和精神壓抑。他在演講中說到：“必須叫醒德國”。
這番演說隨後與繼任的聯邦總理施羅德（Gerhard Schröder）於2003年3月宣布的2010年議程掛鉤，聯邦政府隨後對德國的勞動力市場和社會製度進行了強有力的改革。
林尼曼指責聯邦政府和總理朔爾茨沒有製定解決當前問題的計劃。“我對他沒有太多指望，但至少應該為德國未來三到五年內做好安排。”
然而，不管外界如何看衰德國，德國總理朔爾茨都並不被影響分毫，甚至有一分不解。他並不認為德國經濟有什麽問題。在一次線下活動中他表示，德國是一個有未來的工業國家，應該杜絕悲觀主義。
“我們將成為歐洲半導體的生產基地”。關於去工業化的說法根本不符合事實。
當被問及德國經濟衰退時他表示：“人們談論的困難與德國經濟無關。事實是，德國有比以往任何時候都多的員工參加了社會保險。聯邦政府知道自己想要走向何方。如果海外出口再次回升，就將再次帶動德國經濟增長。”
正可謂，“不管外麵如何風雨飄搖，我的內心自是巋然不動”。
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
