The German government is expected to approve new incentives for corporate purchases of electric vehicles on Wednesday in a bid to recharge the struggling market for battery-powered cars, according to Continue Reading
Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel Alexander Schuke Potsdam Orgelbau has supplied pipe organs to cathedrals and concert halls for almost 200 years, surviving a wave of upheavals including war and nationalisation under the communist regime of the former East Germany. But the economic fallout from the conflict in eastern Ukraine has forced the family-owned company to seek insolvency protection. More On this topic IN EU Economy Its problems arose after Ukrainian and Russian customers failed to pay for two instruments that took months to build, leaving the company some €400,000 out of pocket. “A small company like ours cannot withstand that kind of shortfall,” says Matthias Schuke, chief executive. “We’ve never known something like this. We know Russia as a very reliable partner.” Germany’s close business links with Russia , in part a legacy of its cold war Ostpolitik , were once a source of growth and profits. But […]
German industrial production contracted 4 per cent month-on-month in August, the biggest decline in over five years and much worse than expected – fuelling fears that even the eurozone’s economic powerhouse is now flirting with a recession. Germany’s economy unexpectedly shrank 0.2 per cent in the second quarter, and subsequent economic data have been muddled at best, sparking concerns that the common currency area’s biggest and most influential member could slip into a technical recession. Economists had only expected industrial production to fall 1.5 per cent in August, and last month’s 1.9 per cent gain was today revised down to 1.6 per cent. On an annualised basis, industrial production dived 2.8 per cent in August, compared to expectations of only a 0.5 per cent decline from the same month last year. The data was "another shocker" for the German economy, wrote Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING. Such a […]
When Germany kicked off its journey toward a system harnessing energy from wind and sun back in 2000, the goal was to protect the environment and build out climate-friendly power generation. More than a decade later, Europe ’s biggest economy is on course to miss its 2020 climate targets and greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants are virtually unchanged. Germany used coal, the dirtiest fuel, to generate 45 percent of its power last year, the highest level since 2007, as Chancellor Angela Merkel is phasing out nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima atomic accident in Japan three years ago. The transition, dubbed the Energiewende, has so far added more than 100 billion euros ($134 billion) to the power bills of households, shop owners and small factories as renewable energy met a record 25 percent of demand last year. RWE AG, the nation’s biggest power producer, last year reported its […]
BASF SE (BAS) ’s oil and gas arm agreed to buy assets from Norway’s Statoil ASA (STL) for $1.25 billion, diversifying energy supplies for Germany’s biggest chemical maker as relations between Europe and Russia worsen. BASF’s Wintershall is acquiring a share in two producing fields, two development projects, the Polarled pipeline project and a share in four exploration licenses, the Ludwigshafen, Germany-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Wintershall’s daily production in Norway will increase 50 percent to about 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent. The Norwegian deal will make BASF, Germany’s largest industrial user of gas, less reliant on supplies from Russia as the U.S. and European Union ratchet up sanctions in response to the conflict in Ukraine. An asset swap with OAO Gazprom (OGZD) , agreed to in 2012 and expected to close this autumn, was set to boost Russia’s share of BASF’s supply to more than […]
BERLIN — In an indication of Germany’s growing role on the world stage, the country’s top politicians on Sunday approved the delivery of thousands of machine guns and hand grenades, as well as hundreds of antitank missiles, to Kurdish forces battling Islamic militants in Iraq. Scarred by its militarism and two resounding defeats in the 20th century, Germany once shied away from conflict zones and limited its involvement to deliveries of humanitarian aid. But, although Chancellor Angela Merkel has yet to articulate a clear policy on intervention, she and her top ministers have dominated efforts to ease the Ukraine crisis. And on Sunday, they moved to approve the weapons for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. A solid majority in Parliament backs sending weapons, while opinion polls indicate that up to two-thirds of Germans — weaned on decades of pacifism — oppose the move. Ms. […]
BERLIN—The German Economics Ministry said Friday it has approved the sale of RWE AG ‘s oil and natural gas exploration subsidiary RWE Dea AG to an investment holding vehicle of Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman , despite growing Russo-German tensions over the Ukraine crisis. Fridman’s LetterOne Group and RWE agreed the deal in March which valued Dea at €5.1 billion ($6.8 billion), including €600 million in liabilities. The ministry said it has no objections to the sale to Luxembourg-based LetterOne. "The decisive factor for our decision was that LetterOne is an EU-based investor and that we see no indication for any kind of improper bypassing," said Economics Ministry spokeswoman Tanja Alemany Sanchez de León. "In addition, we don’t expect that this planned acquisition will have any negative impact on Germany’s security of [oil and gas] supply." An RWE spokeswoman said: "With this decision, we have cleared another hurdle." The company […]
BERLIN—The German Economics Ministry said Friday it has approved the sale of RWE AG ‘s oil and natural gas exploration subsidiary RWE Dea AG to an investment holding vehicle of Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman , despite growing Russo-German tensions over the Ukraine crisis. Fridman’s LetterOne Group and RWE agreed the deal in March which valued Dea at €5.1 billion ($6.8 billion), including €600 million in liabilities. The ministry said it has no objections to the sale to Luxembourg-based LetterOne. "The decisive factor for our decision was that LetterOne is an EU-based investor and that we see no indication for any kind of improper bypassing," said Economics Ministry spokeswoman Tanja Alemany Sanchez de León. "In addition, we don’t expect that this planned acquisition will have any negative impact on Germany’s security of [oil and gas] supply." An RWE spokeswoman said: "With this decision, we have cleared another hurdle." The company […]
BERLIN — Over recent months, something significant has happened in Europe: In the crisis over Ukraine, Germany has assumed leadership not just in its familiar fashion of trying to coax Russia away from belligerence and bluster, but in standing firm and imposing sanctions on Moscow even if they hurt German business. Perhaps even more remarkable is that Germans, long anxious to preserve commercial, energy and cultural ties with their vast eastern neighbor, have gone along. Seventy percent of 1,003 adults polled last week by Infratest dimap for the public broadcaster ARD approved of stricter sanctions; just 15 percent viewed Russia as a reliable partner in a poll with a three-percentage-point margin of sampling error. In marked contrast to France’s leadership, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her government — a united “grand coalition” of center-right and center-left — have kept German businesses apprised of any shift in thinking and made it […]
PARIS — An important reading on the health of the eurozone economy is expected to show this week that growth stagnated in the most recent quarter as German output faltered, confirming the assessment of many analysts that a lasting recovery remains out of reach for the region. Economists are expecting that in the 18-nation currency bloc, gross domestic product expanded 0.1 percent in the second quarter compared with the first quarter, equivalent to an annual rate of growth of 0.4 percent. The eurozone eked out quarterly growth of 0.2 percent in the first three months of the year. The eurozone G.D.P. report, to be released Thursday by the European Union statistical agency, Eurostat, is based on data from before the latest tensions over Ukraine, and before the sanctions against Russia for its involvement in the crisis began to be felt. That means there are plenty of questions hanging over […]
