Ever since Alternative für Deutschland had their coming-out party in April, commentators have struggled to say something interesting about this new anti-Euro party. Will they disrupt the continuation of the Black-Yellow ...

Germany expects Austria and Luxembourg to take part in an EU-wide effort to clamp down on tax evasion, even though the two countries last week blocked a key EU proposal on the topic. An EU summit devoted to tax evasion ...

German politicians from across the political spectrum have expressed their outrage after Hungary's Viktor Orban compared Angela Merkel's policies to the Nazi invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler. “The Germans already sent ...

A giant Barbie doll house opened its gates in Berlin on Thursday (16 May) amid protests criticising the toy's "sexist" image. Inside the "Barbie Dreamhouse Experience" there are no windows. But there are touchscreens, ...

US treasury secretary Jack Lew will repeat calls for Germany to stimulate demand in order to drag the eurozone out of recession, according to US government sources. Speaking with reporters in Washington on Wednesday (8 ...

The eurozone's planned banking union is "urgent" and should be created within the current EU treaties, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday (7 May) after previously suggesting a treaty change was ...

A landmark trial against the only survivor of a neo-Nazi cell which killed 10 people and went undetected for years is starting in Munich on Monday (6 May). Thirty-eight year old Beate Zschaepe is accused of being ...

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has defended Germany's Angela Merkel in an increasingly nervous debate on EU austerity. Speaking in an interview with German weekly Die Welt am Sonntag at the weekend (5 May ...

Chancellor Angela Merkel is not renowned for her humour and skills in smalltalk. And yet the people who filled the Maxim Gorki theatre in Berlin on Thursday (2 May) were surprised to discover a light-hearted self- ...

Italy's new Prime Minister Enrico Letta went to Berlin for political talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday (30 April) just hours after being confirmed by the Italian Senate. Speaking ahead of the meeting, the ...

EU social commissioner Laszlo Andor has asked Germany to raise its wages in order to boost consumption and help other countries in the eurozone to export more. A shift from budget cuts and austerity towards economic ...

A personal attack on German leader Angela Merkel by President Francois Hollande's Socialist party has prompted fierce debate in France. The attack came in a draft policy paper designed to be published at a party ...

With its record-low unemployment (5.4%), Germany stands out among fellow eurozone countries such as France or Spain, suffering from sky-high jobless rates. Part of Germany's success is due to a series of reforms pushed ...

Germany is known for being particularly sensitive on data privacy issues. Google Street View - a service combining maps with actual photographs of streets and buildings - had to put blurred houses in its German service ...

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said there is no German hegemony in Europe, but insisted that euro countries cede more sovereignty to overcome the crisis. "To me this hegemonial [concept] is completely foreign," she said ...

The German government Wednesday (17 April) denied it is stalling on the eurozone's "banking union," but says the plans would require an EU treaty change which could take years. "We are not suddenly asking for a change ...

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has bluntly told Serbia it cannot open EU accession talks unless it cedes control of north Kosovo. "An agreement on starting negotiations on Serbia joining the EU, which it ...

The German parliament is likely to approve Cyprus' bailout programme despite concerns over a widening funding gap and growth projections which may prove too optimistic. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on ...

A new party calling for the dissolution of the eurozone held its founding congress in Berlin on Sunday (14 April), hoping to capitalise on disillusioned voters in the September elections. Around 1,500 delegates gathered ...

A family weekend at a castle near Berlin allowed German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron to seek common ground on an EU-US trade agreement and the fight against tax evasion. The visit ...

British Prime Minister David Cameron is travelling to Germany for a family weekend at Angela Merkel's holiday retreat, where he will try to convince the Chancellor to back him on re-evaluating EU's powers. Cameron is ...

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl - the architect of German reunification - admitted he would never have won a referendum on the adoption of the euro in his country and said he acted "like a dictator" to see the ...

French President Francois Hollande will Friday (6 April) receive Germany's opposition leader and chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck in Paris after recently admitting there is "friendly tension" with Angela Merkel ...

Germany has warned Serbia that its EU accession prospects hang on a result in the ongoing negotiations on Kosovo. A German government spokesman told EUobserver in Berlin on Wednesday (3 April): "We regret that the talks ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel - for many the incarnation of EU austerity and German rigour - has shown her softer side by visiting a waiter who lost his job. She paid the surprise visit to the home of Cristoforo ...

Germany has warned Cyprus that the European Central Bank (ECB) will pull the plug on its two largest banks in the absence of a bailout programme and said the terms of the rescue will not change. German finance minister ...

The political-economic implications of the Cyprus bailout are far-reaching. First of all, the eurozone has for the first time chosen not to protect depositors. Usually when a bank goes belly up, you expect stock holders ...

The Cyprus bailout fiasco is yet another example of Germany's clumsy leadership and image problem in Europe. It was only last month that the German President, Joachim Gauck, made an attempt to reassure people in ...

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and European Central Bank board member Joerg Asmussen during parallel events in Berlin on Monday (18 March) tried to blame each other for an unprecedented eurozone bailout deal ...

Until recently, Brussels has supported primarily front-load austerity measures. When President Hoover tried similar policies in 1930s America, a severe recession morphed into a devastating Great Depression. Is Europe ...

A new party in favour of returning to the Deutsche Mark is taking shape in Germany, hoping to attract voters disillusioned by the political establishment. Unlike other European countries, Germany's firm pro-EU and pro- ...

Thousands took to the streets Sunday (3 March) to protest against a luxury real estate project that would take down a part of the longest stretch of what remains of the Berlin wall. The 1.3km long "EastSide Gallery" is ...

Cancer-inducing chemicals, flaring tap water, sick children, dead animals, wasteland as far as the eye can see. An award-winning documentary, GasLand, three years ago exposed the dark side of what the US says is its " ...

On his first trip to Berlin as US foreign secretary John Kerry on Tuesday (26 February) praised Germany's leadership in Europe and made a strong case for an EU-US free trade agreement. "I remember biking here down the ...

In his first-ever speech on the European Union, German President Joachim Gauck on Friday (22 February) told crisis-hit countries that there is no threat of them being ruled by "German diktat." Eleven months in office, ...

The German opposition has accused Angela Merkel of betraying Europe by siding with British leader David Cameron in negotiations on the EU budget, the first ever to be smaller budget than its predecessors. "This budget ...

Germany and Poland, as well as the Czech republic and Sweden, have put forward joint ideas on how to handle post-Soviet countries, in what some diplomats are calling a "new axis" in EU foreign policy. The four nations ...

Online retailer Amazon is at the centre of a media storm after its subsidiaries in Germany were accused of terrible labour conditions and using neo-Nazi guards to intimidate the workforce. The allegations were made in a ...

Cheap loans from the European Central Bank (ECB) might have calmed the euro crisis, but the fundamental problems are still there: governments have too much debt and no strategy to get out of it, Raimund Roeseler, ...

In the light of today’s constellation of forces and interests in eastern Europe, Germany needs to adopt a new eastern policy. A future German approach should combine high level of attention to Russia with more care for ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel likes football. So much so, that a Paris stadium seemed like a good place to have a "brief, but intense" conversation with French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday (6 February) on ...

The German government has moved quickly to shoot down a plea by French President Francois Hollande for the EU to agree measures to control the euro's exchange rate. Government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Wednesday ...

Germany and France will table joint proposals for deeper eurozone integration by May and are "working closely" to get a deal on EU's seven-year budget next month, the two leaders said on Tuesday (22 January) during ...

The leaders of Germany and France encouraged young people to be "utopian" and dream of a European federal state with common taxation, on the eve of festivities on Tuesday (22 January) marking the 50th anniversary of the ...

The Social Democrats and Greens narrowly won the elections in Lower Saxony on Sunday (20 January), indicating a tougher-than-expected race for Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right coalition at general elections in ...

Franco-German relations are about to be celebrated in style. The entire French government, most of the Assemblee nationale, plus a handful of senators – about 600 people all told - will decamp to Berlin on Monday (21 ...

Jean Claude Juncker is to bow out as President of the Eurogroup this week when the 17 eurozone finance ministers gather in Brussels for their first meeting of 2013. Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem who already ...

Regional elections in Lower Saxony on Sunday (20 January) are being seen as a barometer for Germany's general elections in autumn, with Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partner struggling for survival. The ...

Germany, the world's second largest holder of gold reserves after the US, on Wednesday (16 January) decided to repatriate part of its gold bars stored in New York and all of those kept in Paris by 2020. "The German ...