[Regnum] The German economy is experiencing a serious crisis, and it is developing into a pan-European one, since other EU countries are integrated into German supply chains, and the EU budget depends on German contributions, German journalist Wolfgang Munchau noted in his publication on March 31 in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
According to his assessment, the industrial decline in Germany took place before 2022, and after the start of a special military operation by Russia and the introduction of many anti-Russian sanctions, the crisis only intensified.
“The Russian special operation in Ukraine and the subsequent anti-Russian sanctions have brought the German economy to the brink of an abyss. Germany's neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe are largely integrated into German supply chains. The EU also depends on the country’s contributions to the budget and on its government bonds to support the eurozone,” the material says.
As Regnum reported, in March 2024, Bloomberg observers wrote that most of the family-owned companies in Germany, which actually form the basis of the country's economy, were on the verge of collapse due to sharp restrictions on government funding and extremely high electricity prices. The authors of the same publication previously noted that Germany's days as an industrial superpower were coming to an end.
In January 2024, Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Economic Affairs of Germany Robert Habeck said that the German economy was experiencing a shortage of funds due to the costs of supporting Ukraine, as well as other EU countries helping Kiev. The German government noted that the amount of funds that Germany has spent on helping Ukraine since February 2022 exceeds 25 billion euros.
In October 2023, President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia had fully overcome the 2022 economic downturn. During a meeting with entrepreneurs in Khabarovsk on January 11, the president noted that by the end of 2023, the Russian economy had overtaken Germany and taken fifth place in the world and first in Europe, despite the fact that the West is trying to “strangle and crush” Russia from all sides.