Germany’s economic problems scare the public – world

The impact of Germany’s current economic woes, which threaten to push the country into recession, is underlined by the results of a nationwide fear survey, with the rising cost of living emerging as the top concern for the third year in a row.

The survey of 2,400 respondents aged 14 and over was carried out by R+V Versicherung in July and August.

It emerged that one of Germany’s most deeply buried concerns has resurfaced, as it is the 14th time in the 33 years the survey has been conducted that financial fears have come first.

Other major concerns were the unaffordability of housing, cuts in benefits or tax increases, as well as the influx of refugees into the country and the resulting social tensions. The report noted that this was a bigger problem in the east of the country, where the far-right Alternative for Germany party had recently enjoyed electoral success.

“This (poverty) is a really deep-rooted fear in Germany,” the study’s leader, Grischa Brower-Rabinowitsch, told DW.

“Over the 33 years of our study, fear of rising costs of living was the number one fear in our study a total of 14 times. As soon as prices rise, that fear resurfaces.”

The public’s fears are unlikely to have been alleviated by the fact that Economics Minister Robert Habeck confirmed on Wednesday that German gross domestic product would shrink for the second year in a row, by 0.2 percent, although growth of 0.3 percent had been expected and he blamed what he called the “failures of the last few decades” for this.

“The recovery is being delayed again, but now primarily not because the economic factors have deteriorated or developed more slowly, but because structural factors are making it significantly more difficult,” he added.

With Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government struggling in opinion polls and federal elections less than a year away, opposition politicians quickly recognized the government’s bleak prospects.

“There is a risk of a downward spiral that we will remain in this difficult economic situation in the coming years,” said Carsten Linnemann, a leading CDU politician, in front of the Reichstag.

Elsewhere in the survey, terrorism and political extremism are the fears that have increased the most since the last survey, but concerns about natural disasters and climate change have both fallen down the rankings.

This despite the fact that thousands of people had to be evacuated from cities in the south of the country in June due to flooding and the country was also on the edge of the devastating storm Boris, which hit central Europe in September.