densely populated areas. but. you're watching new style with us for business news with monica jones who will tell us which column micah to stay profitable through the pandemic can also find more news and analysis as always about web site a d w dot com american held that we more news at the top of the hour. more than a 1000 years ago europe witnesses a huge construction boom. christianity for established itself. both religious and secular leaders or to display their power.

to trace the games. and create the tallest biggest and the most beautiful structure. is home massive churches were created. conscious to be fools starts april 12th on d. w. . profitable it even in the pandemic slaton says it made money in 2020 despite covert 19 of the german comic announces on vicious plans to go electric also coming up a new page in the brics a drama house the european union takes me the action against britain accusing it of breaching of their divorce deal will find out what it's all about. hello and welcome to your business i'm not a good job today. it's

a day of reckoning the full extent of a difficult year will be laid bare as a number of leading german companies released their annual reports this morning helping to give us a sense of the winners and the losers of the pandemic now among the latter fraport airport few industries have fared worse than travel and germany's largest transport hub took a battering as cargo and passenger numbers plummeted notching up a 650000000 euro loss for 2020. it's been however a bump a year for online retailers salaam go as lock down restrictions forced shoppers to reach for their laptops no question salon doe's a winner for europe's largest car manufacturer it's less clear on the one hand fox bargain falls into the losers can't you re post-tax profit in 2020 we're down more than a 3rd from 2019 on the other hand well they are still making money and process a sales are recovering to look at the numbers fox margins results released in the

past few minutes confirm a profit of 8800000000 euros last year it's a positive outcome for the carmaker despite covert 900 taken its toll through much of the year. as the rapid recovery in china and strong sales of luxury models helped it to stay in profit. well let's turn to one man who can sort of bring a little bit more to the story now and that is our financial correspondent good to see you ok bottom line is fog slide in good or in bad shape one year into the pandemic. good morning monica well in quite good shape given that we have this pandemic the numbers that folks martin came out with are really strong and in anticipation of such strong numbers the share price of the folks who are in group at the exchange has risen more than 20 percent during the last 4 weeks alone of

course at the beginning of the pandemic of the 2nd quarter of last year the whole group experienced a slump in sales but. with the end of the year and. the end of the year there was a strong return and of course if we talk about the folks my group we have to mention that 12 brands are members of this group including z. out including school dowdy but also cautious lamborghini and who gotti so what yet strong return and say it through the end of the year and i think the share price increase is pretty warranted but well you mentioning those $12.00 brands how are they fairing. well you already mentioned that luxury is really went back folks makes the most money and it has also posted the strongest sales increases in this segment china is really a hot market for example for audi audi overall worldwide in february saw an

increase of 31 percent that was outperformed only by porsche it with an increase in sales of 33 percent other brands which depend more on the european market like skoda also in part at least folks cars itself they have seen a bit more shaky sales numbers and it has to be said for its bar group wants to make sure that the. skoda brands like this don't become too successful compared with the core folks who are they are not supposed to compete to successfully against you know the v.w. bread. all right there thank you so much for bringing us up to date on the fog sodden numbers thank you so much. brings us to our next topic namely is a no deal breaks it's still possible the european union says it will take legal

action against the british government after it announced it will unilaterally extend the grace period for brakes it the e.u. says london's decision to delay imposing customs checks on food deliveries to northern ireland amounts to a violation of the brakes a degree meant if no solution can be found the e.u. could suspend its obligations under that deal the european parliament which has yet to approve the brics it trade agreement as a ready postponed its decision. now matthew mole from v.w. business joins me and to try to make sense of all that for us now so the e.u. launches legal action against the u.k. for not complying with the northern ireland protocol that's basically what it comes down to what exactly is that about is worth remembering what the northern ireland protocol is this was the the agreement that was reached in haste at the end of last year to try to preserve the good friday agreement and to deal with this unique

situation in northern ireland zain has a shares a land border with the e.u. but it's part of britain and so in order to avoid a border through ireland bought to protect the e.u. single market the u.k. a greek to have limited checks on goods that were leaving great britain the island of england scotland wales the are heading over to northern ireland and that's produced all sorts of headaches especially because this deal was done very little on christmas to give a lot of time for businesses to to prepare for the paper that would be involved and so. what you had was you you had empty supermarket shelves and then now we have a grace period there where grace periods but the u.k. has said the grace periods that we have in place on and off so they've they've they've they've extended them unilaterally and the e.u. has sent off a very angry email i don't think kind of started legal proceedings now alternately this deal and that problem and that's been in the making for what is now 2021 the

referendum was 2016 so for almost 5 years we're aware of the problem it's been in the making for that period why is the u.k. not complying understand empty shelves and all that but i mean it was. known wasn't it you know this is look the the problem that was the. coronavirus took over all of last year kind of dominated business the british government was unwilling to be seen to breach of promise to leave the e.u. in good time boris johnson made promises of the promise of the promise that the northern island would still be part of the e.u. the u.k. story and that there would be no checks between goods and i think that they were hoping that the this would happen so smoothly the consumers and. the public in northern ireland wouldn't notice the transition the things would stop business trade would stop between the u.k.

and northern ireland and but that hasn't been the case traders in export of the businesses are through the hands up saying this is terrible we've got so much paperwork we can't get our goods and we don't want to do business with it want to import goods from the u.k. and so the u.k. is know how to kind of to through a launch a grenade and you need a lateral extend grace period at the risk of upsetting its part but who says that they've deliberately breached and out of the course of that deal that deal isn't even ratified yet you have 10 seconds is there a solution this solution will probably be the the u.k. my back pedal a bit before it reaches the european core i mean the ultimate threat that you has is tariffs but i don't think that i don't think it will reach the station matthew moore thank you so much the muddled situation nevertheless thank you so much pleasure. to venezuela now and author of terror in country that's struggling with a growing cash crunch with annual inflation hitting nearly 2700 percent leader

nicolas maduro hopes the digital believe are will help keep the currency crisis they are under control a ticket for the round trip commute to work in caracas costs around $20.00 u.s. cent that translates into a staggering $400000.00 believers in local currency hyperinflation is fuelling chronic shortages of cash and venezuela. venezuelans have stopped using cash believe ours for most day to day purchases instead many use u.s. dollars in cash or debit cards sometimes backed by u.s. dollar accounts at local banks around 3 quarters of all cash circulating is spent on public transport. paying transport fares is complicated because there is no cash since there are no believers in cash you have to buy foreign currency to pay the fare i had at least $5.00 u.s. dollars for this ticket and paid for 3 tickets i received $3.00 in change in cash

and the rest you believe ours so i'm already losing because it's never the same as selling dollars on the black market and that. the venezuelan government is now pressing banks to implement digital payment systems to fight the cash crunch it wants the public transport system to be the 1st to use cashless payment residents say something has to be done. in my case i live in the values to toy and to travel from cover to the value i need at least 1000000 believe are you know what a. digital payment systems have their own challenges to however including the high costs of point of sale terminals as they wait for the digital believe are to transport them to the future but israel and commuters are stuck with a value losing paper money per now a high price to pay for mobility. taught in state power utility wants to promote renewable energy with floating sewed up plants currently renewables accounted for about 15 percent of the kingdom's electricity makes by 276 this is expected to more

than double. floating solar parks each one the size of 10 soccer fields and that's just the beginning today another segment is being towed to its final location for sui to show took it's become routine even if the conditions today are not ideal and 2 days passed on when they may have to meet at a town at the plant there to understand what just the guy. in the beginning speed boats were used for towing but they were not easy to maneuver. we used as the tool diving smoothly and be happy. to control. the moment when we face a problem. and. each individual segment is 130 metres long and over 30 metres wide the most critical moment is

docking because i like the gigantic rafts themselves their connection points are rather tiny. it's very small hole to manage to get at. it is that once our land stable at small. when all the solar rafts are in place and anchored they'll cover 720000 square meters of the reservoir and provide $45.00 megawatts of energy anough 1st small town thanks to the water's natural cooling effect the modules are up to 15 percent more efficient than on land you're going to bend there's an electrical engineer who are pfizer's thailand's electricity suppliers on renewables benda explains that although floating solar fields already exist in some countries when it comes to size thailand is setting completely new standards. this is

10 times bigger than the one they just launched in the u.s. . you can see the dimensions of the field there there's nothing like it in europe either you know part of the floating solar park is scheduled to go online at the end of june the tires are already planning 16 more that's your business update thanks for watching. hunting in the arctic circle who has the right to do so in the land of the late hours of. sweden supreme court has ruled that exclusive game hunting and fishing rights will be restored to one of the oldest son the community. it was a historic moment for the sonny and a source of aggravation for swedish hunters from close up. next on t.w. . national drama competition

rivalry marketing numbers atmosphere and power fight at sac intuition love hate money millionaires fans friends class fans and fans all. go off on you tube joining us. sweden's arctic region. thousands of years the indigenous sami people have been heading reindeer on this land. for very long time this part of the land was for the sami people and then they was living here there was fishing there was hunting. in one way.