and against a muscle which carried all the october, 2nd tower. and that's it from me and then his team don't go away. germany, economists clements fullest explains why his country has been dumped. the tired man . all here. i've got office in berlin. thanks for watching the we are all set and we're watching closely. we all seem to bring you the story behind the news. we rolled about unbiased information all 3 months. done what i mean? i know, did i mean by? i might just do it and i'm hosting dw new podcasts, thanks trace amount, but there's no actually about move. joining us as we travel around your,

facing the history of every day. ok. and that's something right around the wells. and i need to talk to you about justice, subscriber id, listen to podcasts, and will take you along to the right. the farmer is blocking roads trains at a standstill, the worst performing major economy in the world last year. not to mention a 17000000000 the euro hole and its budget. germany wants to beacon of european fiscal stability is struggling to help us understand why i'm showing that. if i came in 1st president of the full economic research institute on a close washer of the german economy. mister foods, how did we get into this mess? i think it's a combination of factors of cost. the dom an economy was hit very hard by the

energy crisis by the fall out of the russian attack on ukraine. the country has managed to adjust to that more or less, but it has kept us in recession and ma with finding it difficult to get out of this recession and business related to a number of factors. one being bad. in the more medium time manner, some of our key industries are in a difficult transition. the car industry with electric mobility mine with high energy prices. the chemical industry is traveling. so it's a number of factors. some of them a home made like high taxes more and more bureaucracy. and all these factors are a bit much now. and perhaps, unsurprisingly then a lot of people are feeling very discontent. the farmers are angry. rail workers are on strike again. our german wages too low is not what this is about. a german wages are rising at the moment. so wages as such,

are not relevant for farmers but uh for uh, trained drivers. yes. but german wages are actually rising quite quickly. so in a way, it's surprising that this is not driving consumption, and one explanation would be that people are not so confident about the future and save their incomes rather than consuming them. so that is one factor, and it's related to this question. yes, we have managed these short term crisis spots. so the what is lacking is a longer term perspective for returning to economic growth. that's what's electric . i want to talk about some potential solutions a little bit later, but staying on that issue of workers, because one of germany's biggest problems right now is that it doesn't have enough of them. here is a charge. the eco institute produced, which shows the extent of that problem. you can see the breakdown of sectors of the top on the share of companies that say they are in need of work or is there mr.

foods? the skills storage is one thing, but that of course comes on top of the fact that german society is aging very fast . what do you think needs to be done to stabilize the labor market? one thing is that the workforce is aging and shrinking, and particularly in the coming years about to another factor is that if you look at i was walk, we see that part more people go on pop time, walk and hear. the good news is we can do something about it. so currently, a social transfer and tech system created strong incentives to watch a few hours now just to pop time and by reforming. but we could get small people again to work full time of calls. there are the effect of the child care doing multiple immigration. so there was a number of reforms that could help here. but just to clarify, are you saying then one of the biggest problems is that german workers are working enough? correct. if you look at the individual work hours,

they have declined significantly over the past years. we shouldn't forget, we have 46000000 people in the walk. false. that's a record at the same time, everybody's complaining about not finding enough employees. how come back be you know, the answer is if we look at what hours uh, the number of walk i was hasn't really increase the number of employees. yes. but individual walk time has fallen very strongly and that explains why there is such a shortage of labor supply or so if you are all of choice, how would you sell that to the electress. i think this is an easy sell. in fact, i would say we need to reform all tax and transfer system. so the people who work mall also have higher net income is currently for a significant part of the population. it doesn't pay very much when people walk

them off because they lose social transfer. they pay very high taxes um, by reforming that we can generate more employment with out of great costs to the government. so i really think this is one of the few areas where we almost have a free lunch and we should eat that if it's free. well, there is the cost of a free lunch, but at the same time, there is a $17000000000.00 euro hole in germany's budgets. i'm, how are we going to fix last? while the government has decided to fix that through some, let's say budgetary maneuvers, but also increases in some taxes. and uh, i think what's behind that is a big a problem. and that is a lack of public and private investment in germany that has been around for some time. and i think to fix that, we need a major step. my preferred solution would be

a consensus with the opposition and an adjustment in the constitution that would or would create a new investment fund for a longer period of time. so digitize ation the carbon isaiah and infrastructure. we need investments here and we should come up with some kind of a longer term plan to make sure that this investment happens. ideally, this should go along with cuts in public consumption spending about the part of that also has to be financed through debt. so in other words, an end to germany is debt break is not at all i, we could preserve the dep brackets a bit complicated. we can preserve the debt break, but create a special from the debt break, leaves room fall that create a special fund for these investments. the, the, the hurdle is you'll need to, to 3rd majority in the pol them on fall that i wouldn't dismiss. but that break the debt break has proved to be very useful because it falls is politician to really

discuss priorities and spending robin financing, everything and solving our conflicts through debt. so i think the debt break is successful. it just has this problem. but we now have some investment needs and the debt break says, yes, you can do that. you can go into debt, but you need to 3rd majority for that. i want to look at the prospective of employers. and now, because the head of germany's employers association came right this very week with a very strong statement, he said, we must be careful not to go from being the adage and also european union to a museum of prosperity. we employers have lost trust in this government. our neighbors looked at us with more concern than we do mister full, so your reaction is not statement as well. i think possibly this statement is justified. a bought only probably because it's a bit exaggerated. i think the government has managed the energy crisis quite well

. so fall, so we have them pack gas, gas shortages. and i think that should also be a knowledge. but i support this statement in the sense that yes, we do lack a convincing strategy for economic growth. and our government doesn't even have a consensus that it wants to have growth. so there are parts of the government saying no growth is not so important in general, we should focus more on climate change. and i think that's what the seriously misguided concept. so the government needs to get its act together and present a plan that allows us to deal with the challenges that have like a labor shortages. the carbonized ation, the problems with infrastructure. so this growth crime is lacking and mr. druggist said, we need to get to our act together and do something about it. and i think it's right in that regard. okay, well, let's talk about how to get our acts together. um, the country's economic power,

germany has traditionally been in the ocean. most of the chemicals and engineering sectors, but these are all areas that are both energy intensive and they're also export reliance. so let's look at germany's ron king when it comes to innovation because it is not exactly at the top of its game. as you can see here, it's training behind the likes of switzerland, sweden, the u. s. u k, and singapore. coming in as a right number ace. over all mr. post, we're talking solutions here. what does germany need to do to become more innovative, more ready for the future? or? innovation is key indeed, and germany has been quite good at innovation, but it's more about what's called modern and innovation. so improving cause of them all getting better machinery and germany has struggled mall with the being successful in disruptive innovations. in new technologies, we need to do something about that with so we need to invest more in

a research and development. but we also need to create better conditions. phone usually created companies. if you look at the number of and you would have created a companies, a germany is weaker. he a lot weaker than the us. everybody knows that. but also we could then the okay, so we need to create better conditions, fall of the creation of new companies that has to do with capital markets with the tech system and so on. and we also need to create better conditions for our existing companies to innovate in germany does have a lot of very successful industrial companies, even outside the automotive industry. the so called hidden tompkins, but they are held back by bureaucracy, a lot of bureaucracy by high taxes, the by a lack of qualified employees. and we need to do something about that and create better conditions for them. and if we do that, i think we'd also be better in the innovation. you mentioned earlier that parts of this german government, i'm more interested in talking climate change then and promotion growth. i'm

wondering, do you think those 2 things are possible to achieve at the same time and, and is that necessarily wrong to focus more on climate change that on economic growth? i think it's wrong to pitch one against the other. it's wrong to say we don't want to grow generally anymore. we want to focus on climate change. it would be correct to say yes, climate change needs efforts that will reduce growth or at least require some sacrifice in terms of consumption, but to be able to deal with that. we need mall growth more economic growth, not less. we need to be more effective. we need to have better why consent if we need to innovate mall and grow more about the grow and then environmentally friendly way? that's the message. i think it's seriously misleading to say, oh, let's forget about this focus on growth and focus. more on climate change and nobody will follow germans will follow europe if we go down that route and

nobody in the world would like that strategy. so we have to demonstrate that we kind of reconcile the climate change with economic success. we also have to be open about the fact that yes, some sacrifice in terms of consumption will be needed, but we need to show that. so it could all make success can be combined with climate protection. if we don't other countries, we'll say we focus on growth and forgot the climate that would be very bad the, there's more to sustainable fishing than just fishing with ally. go out to sea

together, be cultural heritage. sure. few fishing is a traditional technique archipelago here kind of its importance of lead artist a mean it to be, it's in bassett or eco next on d w, the, sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for. but we've got something for you. what is it really is possible to reverse page researchers and scientists all over the world for you know, race against time. they are peers and arrivals

with one daring goals to help smart teacher. the more likes watching it. on youtube dw documentary, the, the climate change can jeopardize anti economic sectors and take away people's livelihoods. but in many cases, such solutions can help us to adapt ad opportunities to make life better for rules . welcome to a new edition of pico africa. i'm present lens an idea once again we've got the pack show for you today. let's dive straight to coming up. empowering goals out of so love to follow on.