Skip next section Jewish life in Germany: Merz gives emotional speech09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Jewish life in Germany: Merz gives emotional speech
On Monday evening, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz struggled to hold back his tears as he gave an emotional speech celebrating the reopening of the synagogue in Munich.
Merz talked about the “crime against humanity of the Shoah,” the Holocaust, the attempt at the “systematic, industrialized extermination of the Jewish people.”
His voice breaking, Merz paraphrased German-Jewish historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), saying that such radical evil, as Arendt described it, “simply should not have happened among us humans.”
Read more about Merz’s emotional address on the ‘new wave of antisemitism’ in Germany.
https://p.dw.com/p/50a8b
Skip next section Crime statistics: How safe is life in Germany?09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Crime statistics: How safe is life in Germany?
Cases of drug trafficking, knife crime and violence on the streets are frequently reported in the German media.
Crime rates are high in big cities like Bremen, Berlin and Frankfurt, for example, partly because social inequality is higher there than in rural areas.
Read more to find out if crime is on the rise and how Germany compares internationally.
https://p.dw.com/p/50a8l
Skip next section Nord Stream sabotage suspect argues that he has ‘functional immunity’
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Nord Stream sabotage suspect argues that he has ‘functional immunity’
Lawyers for suspect Nord Stream saboteur Serhii K. argued at his extradition hearing that he was a soldier “following orders” during the September 26, 2022 incident and thus the “military nature of the alleged acts entails functional immunity.”
Neither K. nor his lawyers specified who he was allegedly taking orders from.
K. faces up to 15 years in prison in Germany if convicted of collusion to cause an explosion, sabotage, and destruction of important structures.
He has also argued that he was in Ukraine at the time of the attack.
A German investigation found that K. conspired alongside four other Ukrainian men and one Ukrainian woman to carry out the sabotage.
Italian judges will decide on his appeal against extradition in about a month’s time. His lawyers have also argued he was not given a fair trial.
K. “was not allowed to personally attend his own hearings and was denied full access to the German case file, in clear breach of the right to a fair trial,” they said.
Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as controversial as ever
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https://p.dw.com/p/50Yl5
Skip next section Polish president presses for reparations during World War II visit
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Polish president presses for reparations during World War II visit
Nawrocki met with President Steinmeier before holding talks with Chancellor MerzImage: Lisi Niesner/REUTERS
Polish President Karol Nawrocki was greeted with military honors as he met with his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin. He used the opportunity to renew Poland’s calls for further reparations for Nazi Germany’s World War II-era occupation of his country.
Steinmeier reiterated Germany’s long-held position that Berlin has already paid reparations and that the matter is closed.
Warsaw has been making similar requests for at least the past eight years. Polish leaders have called their claims “justified.” Critics have complained that it is merely an avenue for Polish conservatives to score points at home.
https://p.dw.com/p/50XgM
Skip next section Merz: Germans go to the doctor too much
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Merz: Germans go to the doctor too much
Chancellor Merz waded into the debate about Germany’s health care system on Tuesday, the latest target in his bid to cut public costs.
Speaking at a mechanical engineering conference, Merz said there are “one billion doctors’ visits in Germany a year.”
This is a “European record,” he said, implying Germans should be seeing doctors less. It was unclear what source he used for the statistic.
He called for being “thrifty” with medical resources, but did not touch on reports of Germans waiting months to see specialists or health care workers’ complaints of stagnating wages.
Germany: Care work in a strained system
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https://p.dw.com/p/50XfU
Skip next section Italy orders extradition to Germany for suspected Nord Stream saboteur
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Italy orders extradition to Germany for suspected Nord Stream saboteur
An Italian court has ordered that Serhii K., a Ukrainian national, be extradited to Germany.
K., whose full name is withheld due to the German press code guidelines, was arrested in August in connection with the September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which brought Russian gas to Europe.
A series of underwater explosions caused serious damage to the pairs of Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, and essentially rendered all four inoperable. Controversial even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine for increasing Europe’s reliance on Moscow, Nord Stream had become increasingly so following the outbreak of the war. Before the war, Germany got over half of its gas from Russia.
Because the explosions occurred in Swedish and Danish waters on German-owned equipment, all three countries launched investigations.
In August 2024, German authorities concluded their initial investigation and issued an arrest warrant for the suspected ringleader, a Ukrainian national identified as Volodymyr Z. Officials said he had been living in Poland and had chartered a German yacht to carry out the attack. Serhii K. is suspected of being one of his accomplices.
The Ukrainian government has vehemently denied any involvement in the incident.
K.’s lawyers have said they will appeal his extradition all the way up to Italy’s highest court.
Nord Stream: Germany’s thwarted dream of energy security
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https://p.dw.com/p/50XDS
Skip next section US auto giant Ford to cut 1,000 jobs at Cologne plant
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
US auto giant Ford to cut 1,000 jobs at Cologne plant
Ford has announced about 1,000 layoffs at its factory in the western German city of Cologne for early 2026. The layoffs are part of a number of sweeping cost-cutting measures first introduced by the company in 2024, which will include switching from a two-shift workday to a one-shift workday.
A further 1,900 jobs will be cut by the end of 2027, the US carmarker has said. In total, about one in four employees will be handed a severance package.
In May, employees staged a mass work stoppage at the plant. It was the first such industrial action in the nearly 100-year history of the factory.
Ford has struggled to maintain market share in the crowded German auto industry in recent years, particularly with the rise in popularity of electric vehicles.
Ford Cologne strike over job cuts
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https://p.dw.com/p/50X4s
Skip next section Why is Germany passing its 2025 budget this week?
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Why is Germany passing its 2025 budget this week?
Though it’s the middle of September, Germany has not yet legally agreed to its 2025 budget. This is partly because of the breakdown of the former coalition government under ex-Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the snap elections that came at the end of February. After that came weeks of wrangling to create another coalition of Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) as the junior partners and Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
Since then, the conservatives and SPD have been debating on such key issues as the debt brake, defense spending and Germany’s aging infrastructure.
Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, is set to continue debating the budget proposed by the coalition on Tuesday with a deadline of passing a budget by the end of the week.
This financial package will only be good through December — then debate will begin anew for 2026.
https://p.dw.com/p/50X2j
Skip next section Life sentence for Afghan defendant in Mannheim police stabbing
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Life sentence for Afghan defendant in Mannheim police stabbing
A 26-year-old Afghan man has been handed a life sentence for killing a policeman with a knife in the southwestern city of Mannheim in May 2024.
Sulaiman A., whose last name is withheld in Germany for privacy reasons, was filmed attacking officers and members of the anti-Islam group PAX Europa in the city center.
The defendant was shot by police and brought to a local hospital. The attack was met with dismay across Germany and reignited debate about asylum and deportations to Afghanistan.
https://p.dw.com/p/50Wpw
Skip next section Searches carried out against alleged right-wing extremists
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Searches carried out against alleged right-wing extremists
German police raided the homes of suspected far-right sympathizers early on Tuesday morning in the western states of Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg, and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Thirteen dwellings were searched, relating to a group of suspects aged from 32 to 57 who were thought to be in possession of illegal weapons.
Authorities have yet to comment on the exact number of suspects, if they were planning an attack, and if any illicit materials were recovered in the raids.
There have been a number of major raids against right-wing radicals in Germany in recent months, including last week when a series of arrests were made against a group plotting to create a neo-Nazi state.
https://p.dw.com/p/50Wmw
Skip next section Millions of households unable to pay utility bills
09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Millions of households unable to pay utility bills
Germany has experienced a steep rise in the cost of living in recent years. First, the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine made the country’s reliance on cheap Russian gas untenable, and the situation has been compounded by post-pandemic inflation.
According to a study released on Tuesday by the Federal Statistical Office, 4.2 million households in Germany were struggling to pay gas, electric, and other utility bills as prices skyrocketed.
In the same study, one third of Germany’s households reported having to put off necessary repairs to their homes or cars because of the hike in costs.
https://p.dw.com/p/50WoV
Skip next section Welcome to our coverage09/16/2025September 16, 2025
Welcome to our coverage
Guten Morgen from DW’s newsroom in Bonn.
Today, we will be looking at raids against purported extremists across the country, as well as the latest in the increasingly bitter debate over the national budget.
Later today, Polish President Karol Nawrocki will be welcomed in Berlin.
Stay on this page for everything Germany today.
https://p.dw.com/p/50Wmu
