Angela Merkel has just given her traditional New Year’s Eve speech, and already in run-up to her address, the German Chancellor hinted that much of her talking would be devoted to economic conditions. She said that the economic fate of Germany is tied to that of the Eurozone, which is why resolving the crisis for once and all would be embraced by Berlin. Mrs. Merkel added that Germany itself must do a lot of work to maintain its economic strength although the country has been one of the winners of the sovereign debt crisis enjoying falling unemployment rate and enjoying steady growth while the southern part of the Union was struggling with joblessness, budget deficits and international loans.
Nonetheless, Germany has been rather reluctant to provide financial help to the needy Eurozone countries. Initially, many Germans were against bailing out Greece and later also other countries, which, as some argue, exacerbated the crisis even more. Angela Merkel, who spent some three months trying to form a new right-left coalition government which eventually took power in December, did not provide many details about her reform plans for this year.
In domestic policy, the Chancellor’s new coalition set a challenging goal of more than doubling country’s share of renewable energy sources from current 25 percent to 40 to 45 percent by 2025. Mrs Merkel said it was one of her major policy plans to make Germany strong and sustainable in the future as well. Energy transformation is crucial to Germany just as much as “putting the finances in order”, she implied.
Germany has been trying to decrease its budget deficits in last ten years, struggling to achieve balanced budgets from 2013 to 2015 as well as a surplus of 0.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2016 and 2017.
