Germany’s snap election on Sunday, 23 February, has come against a backdrop of economic malaise in Europe’s largest economy. Patience with the incumbent Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, of the Social Democratic Party, had grown thin after two consecutive years of negative GDP growth. Mr Scholz said his hands had been tied by the German ‘debt brake’, a rule inserted into the German constitution by Angela Merkel in 2009 which limits the annual deficit of the federal government to 0.35% of GDP. But Mr Scholz’s political rival Friedrich Merz, the leader of Mrs Merkel’s former party the Christian Democratic Union and Christian

The recently released IFO survey indicates that Europe’s largest economy, Germany, has continued to weaken after entering a technical recession in the second half of 2023. The headline measure sank in February, with businesses reporting worsening in both current conditions and expectations in relation to future sales. At face value, this implies that the economy has continued to contract throughout the first quarter, albeit at a slower rate than was seen in the second half of 2023. Some of the headwinds the German economy faced last year have abated. Headline inflation dropped from 8.7% in January 2023 to 2.9% in

The German economy contracted by 0.2% in the third quarter of 2018, the first negative print since 2015. The contraction was largely foreseen (the consensus of economists polled by Reuters had expected a 0.1% contraction). The primary cause appears to be bottlenecks in the auto industry following the introduction of the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure (WLTP). However, this is appears to be a predominantly supply-side problem with the fall in new orders data far less pronounced. Whether the German economy rebounds in Q4 will therefore depend upon how soon firms are able to adapt to the new regulatory