The frigate Bayernset sail for the Indo-Pacific at the beginning of August, as a German contribution to upholding the "rules-based international order." Germany increasingly views the rules-based international order as under threat, not least through China's vast territorial claims, including...
Germany faces a major crisis. The German birth rate is considerably below what’s needed to replace the population. German seniors, meanwhile, are living longer and drawing more on state resources for their pensions and health care. There are basically two ways out of this demographic...
In 2015, the European refugee crisis awoke Germans from a long and comforting slumber that Angela Merkel had lulled them into with her political style. The term “asymmetric demobilization” came to be known as a way of describing the German chancellor’s shrewd strategy of sitting on the fence...
There is an unwritten rule in politics: If you are incompetent, at least you should not be corrupt. It seems nobody ever informed the German Christian Democrats that this was the way of things. How else to explain why Christian Democratic MPs thought it was perfectly fine to take advantage of...
If not for the familiar awkwardness of social distancing rules, the scene at the digital party conference of Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would have been fit for a daytime game show. With the theme from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” playing in the background and the CDU's...
Communication between governments and citizens has changed over the years. The digital era has provided state actors with new channels to spread their messages. Different channels offer different types of outreach. Nevertheless, successful communication requires consistency and...
Two reports published in early 2020 shed new light on this challenge. The European Central Bank’s (ECB) risk report on less-significant institutions is the first of what is intended to be an annual series. The impact assessment study on the most important differences between...
On February 23, Hamburg’s voters were called upon to elect a new parliament. Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city and its most important port. But, for historical reasons, it is also one of Germany’s 16 Länder, and one of three city-states (the other two are Berlin and Bremen), that...
The suspect in the terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, 27-year-old Stephan B., was driven by anti-Semitism and a radical-right worldview. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June, this was the second deadly radical-right terrorist attack this year to shake...
Thirty years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and with it the communist regime that had held the East German “workers’ and farmers’ state” in its iron grip since the beginning of the Cold War. A year later, the two German states were reunited. The mood was exuberant,...
