Category Archives: Germany

Madeleine McCann parents say focus on suspect ‘potentially very significant’

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Spokesman says it is first time in 13 years he can recall police fixing sights on one individual

The parents of Madeleine McCann believe the identification of a convicted German sex offender as the key suspect in their daughter’s disappearance is “potentially very significant”, their spokesman has said.

An international appeal for information is under way after police in Britain and Germany revealed that a serving prisoner is the new prime suspect in the disappearance of the three-year-old on 3 May 2007.

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Britons applying for German citizenship up 2,300% last year

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Since Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016, 31,600 Britons have acquired German citizenship

The number of Britons applying for a German citizenship last year was up by approximately 2,300% compared to the year before the Brexit referendum, driving up the number of naturalisations in the country to a 16-year high.

According to data released by the Federal Statistical office on Wednesday, the total number of citizenship applications granted in 2019 increased by 15% year on year to 128,900, with 14,600 granted applications from British citizens accounting for almost half the increase.

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Spain rekindles a radical idea: a Europe-wide minimum income

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Podemos leader enlists Portugal and Italy to lobby for policy as depression looms for coronavirus-ravaged southern Europe

It’s been proposed, probed and pushed to the margins of the European Union for more than two decades. Now, as Europe reels from tens of thousands of coronavirus deaths and millions of lost jobs in the worst recession for generations, ministers from Spain, Italy and Portugal say the time has come to revive a radical idea: a pan-EU minimum income.

“This is the moment for debates about social protection,” Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s deputy prime minister for social rights and leader of Podemos, told the Guardian. “Anyone who finds themselves in a vulnerable situation should have access to protection mechanisms that allow them to fill their fridge and care for their family.” 

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Global report: Germany eases travel ban and cafe culture returns to Paris

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Elsewhere, Italy’s president warns Covid-19 ‘is not over’, and former UK PMs join calls for a coordinated global response

Germany lifted its blanket European travel ban as coronavirus lockdowns across the EU continued to ease, with officials saying new cases in western Europe were now in steady decline.

Parisians reclaimed their cafe terraces and Berliners took back their bars as normal life inched closer to returning in many parts of the continent.

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‘We can’t relax’: Europeans face up to life after lockdown

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From Spain to Denmark, even those who have coped with coronavirus are aware the world has changed dramatically

Her customers may be back and there are, miraculously, more of them. Spring is here; the sun is out. No one wants to dwell on what happened; everyone wants to pick up their lives again, same as before.

“But still,” says Sophie Fornairon, “things have changed.”

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‘Demand is huge’: EU citizens flock to open-air cinemas as lockdown eases

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From Berlin to Madrid the movies are back, albeit with hygiene and distancing restrictions

As Madrid’s spring evenings warm into summer nights, cinema-goers are parking up to watch Grease. In Munich, they are taking al fresco seats to follow the adventures of a communist kangaroo with a penchant for boozy chocolates, and in Prague they are witnessing a croaky vigilante work out some profound childhood traumas.

As Europe begins to stir from its Covid-19 lockdown, people bloated by two-month boxset binges have a new way to feed their entertainment needs as they emerge, blinking, into the daylight. Or, rather, the twilight.

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‘We are losers in this crisis’: research finds lockdowns reinforcing gender inequality

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Campaign groups warn women across Europe risk being pushed back into traditional roles

Life during the coronavirus lockdown has reinforced gender inequality across Europe with research emphasising that the economic and social consequences of the crisis are far greater for women and threaten to push them back into traditional roles in the home which they will struggle to shake off once it is over.

Throughout the continent, campaign groups are warning that the burdens of the home office and home schooling together with additional household duties and extra cooking, has been unequally carried by women and that improvements made in their lives by the growth in equality over the past decades are in danger of being rolled back by the health crisis.

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Global report: Germany to relax travel curbs as Spain mourns Covid-19 victims

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France defends tracking app amid privacy concerns and Hungary aims to lift state of emergency

Denmark has made it easier for cross-border couples separated from their partners by lockdown to meet again, while Germany is expected to allow travel to 31 European countries from mid-June, as EU countries continued to lift coronavirus restrictions.

People living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany can now visit partners in Denmark by signing a simple declaration rather than having to provide photos, phone records and other proof of a relationship, the Danish justice minister, Nick Hækkerup, said.

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German court rules against Volkswagen in ‘dieselgate’ scandal

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Carmaker must pay compensation to motorist who bought minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software

Volkswagen has lost a landmark legal battle in Germany’s highest civil court over compensation for the buyer of a secondhand minivan fitted with emissions-cheating software.

The world’s largest carmaker must take back the plantiff’s manipulated car and pay him €28,257.74 (£25,325), in a case that will lead to the company paying compensation to 60,000 German VW owners.

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‘Exploitative conditions’: Germany to reform meat industry after spate of Covid-19 cases

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Ban on use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 for slaughterhouses breaching new labour regulations a ‘historic moment’, say campaigners

The German government has announced a series of reforms of the meat industry, including a ban on the use of subcontractors and fines of €30,000 (£26,000) for companies breaching labour regulations, as slaughterhouses have emerged as coronavirus hotspots.

A number of meat plants across the country have temporarily closed after hundreds of workers tested positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks.

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Covid-19 track and trace: what can UK learn from countries that got it right?

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Pledge of ‘world-beating’ system will have to look to likes of South Korea and Germany

Boris Johnson’s insistence that the UK will be able to roll out a “world-beating” coronavirus test, track and trace regime by 1 June has inevitably drawn comparisons with countries around the world that have already set up effective Covid-19 tracing programmes.

It has also raised questions about timing, as some experts insist a system would have been more useful at the beginning of the pandemic.

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Volkswagen withdraws Golf car ad that sparked racism row

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Car maker says it is ‘horrified’ by the ad that featured a large white hand ‘flicking’ a black man

Volkswagen has withdrawn a Golf car advertisement posted on its official Instagram page that the company admitted was racist and insulting, saying it would investigate how it came about.

The car company, which has already seen its reputation tarnished in the past five years after it admitted cheating diesel emissions tests, said it did not tolerate any form of racism.

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Germany’s AfD thrown into turmoil by former neo-Nazi’s expulsion

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Row over Andreas Kalbitz splits leadership and sets eastern against western members

With support for Angela Merkel’s governing coalition surging during the coronavirus pandemic, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, has opted for a vicious bout of public infighting that could split the party in two.

The national board of the anti-immigration AfD narrowly voted last Friday to strip party membership from Andreas Kalbitz, a key networker on the rabidly nationalist fringes of the party’s eastern German branches.

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Berlin’s cultural capital in peril from exodus of billionaire art collectors

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Thousands of works will disappear from galleries as rent rises and a stand-off with city government take their toll

Home to some 400 galleries and an estimated 8,000 artists, Berlin has long aspired to be what its politicians call the cultural capital of Europe.

Yet in the coming year, thousands of works by artists including Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Bruce Nauman and Gerhard Richter are set to vanish from its galleries, as the city debates what lengths it should go to to protect art collectors from the sharp edge of a property boom.

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Bathing bears and bungee-jumping mayors: the week’s most uplifting clips – video

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As countries around the world adjust to life with Covid-19, people are finding new ways to enjoy themselves responsibly. From the restaurant using plush pandas to help with social distancing, to a drive-in rave in Germany, these are the week’s most cheering clips

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Coronavirus in Europe: states take small steps towards normality

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Restaurants reopen in parts of Germany, while Italy relaxes travel restrictions

Europe took a step towards post-virus normality on Friday when restaurants in Germany and Austria reopened for the first time in two months, and other countries loosened travel restrictions and threw open borders.

Berlin’s restaurants, cafes and snack kiosks were allowed to serve customers again, so long as they obeyed social distancing. People from two separate households could share a table, but had to keep a distance of 1.5m from each other.

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Russian hacking attack on Bundestag damaged trust, says Merkel

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Chancellor says she was pained to learn outcome of inquiry pinning blame on Fancy Bear

Angela Merkel has said Russian hacking attacks on the Bundestag in which her emails were seized harmed efforts to build a trusting relationship with Moscow.

Merkel told the German parliament on Wednesday that she had been pained to learn of the 2015 hack and the perpetrator.

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Lockdown easing: have other leaders fared better than Boris Johnson?

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Guardian writers report on how various European countries have managed the process

Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised for failing to show Britain a clear route out of lockdown. Easing a nation out of two months of confinement is a complicated business, and some degree of confusion is almost inevitable. Here, Guardian correspondents look at how other European leaders have managed the process.

Spain’s lockdown exit strategy – known formally as the Plan for the Transition Towards the New Normality – was outlined by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during a televised press conference on the evening of 28 April. Sánchez said the country’s four-phase de-escalation initiative would be “gradual and asymmetric”, adding that the first stage – dubbed phase 0 – would come into effect on 4 May.

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Merkel intervenes in damaging row between Germany and Brussels

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European commission has warned of possible legal action over constitutional court ruling

Angela Merkel has stepped in to try to find a way out of a damaging clash between Germany and Brussels after the EU threatened to bring infringement proceedings over a ruling by the country’s constitutional court.

The German chancellor stressed that the dispute was solvable, after the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, issued an unusual statement on Sunday warning of possible legal action against Berlin.

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