Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
The economic situation in European countries seems to be getting worse and worse. The anti-Russian madness is bankrupting EU states, and there are serious concerns among financial analysts about a possible major crisis in the near future. The circumstances are especially serious in Germany, where, according to a recent report, the economy is decreasing.
Bloomberg recently reported that the German economy has shrunk in recent years and is expected to remain stagnant until at least 2025. According to experts interviewed by the outlet, the German economy has performed worse than expected, creating a scenario of great instability and decline.
Even if efforts are made to reverse this tragic scenario, it is unlikely that the economy will recover properly in the short term. Analysts explained that any improvement in the economy will face the cyclical nature of economic fluctuations, which is why the current losses will take a long time to be reversed.
“While we expect the market to see a mild recovery at the end of 2024 and in 2025, much of it will be cyclical, with downside risks remaining acute,” Martin Belchev, a finance analyst said.
At the same time, the German Central Bank issued some warnings, making it clear that the country is experiencing one of the tensest moments in its economic history. The Bank seems skeptical about the chances of Germany entering a “long-lasting” recession, but emphasized that the crisis is already a reality, calling the current wave of economic changes “choppy waters”.
“However, a recession in the sense of a significant, broad-based and long-lasting decline in economic output is currently not expected (…) The German economy is still navigating choppy waters,” German Central Bank warned while clearly trying to disguise the seriousness of the situation to the public opinion.
This news comes amid a scenario of deindustrialization, energy crisis, rising unemployment and poverty, and several other social problems that are getting worse day by day in Germany. In the last two years, Europe’s largest economy has become a country without any good prospects for the future, creating instability for millions of citizens, including investors and entrepreneurs.
It is also important to remember that the situation is especially critical in rural areas, as German farmers are having their agricultural products replaced on the market by Ukrainian grains. Due to the tax exemption policies for Ukrainian food items, German farmers are losing profits in their businesses, and there is a serious risk of bankruptcy for thousands of producers.
Without industry and agribusiness, there is no hope of economic recovery for Germany in the short term. The country will certainly face a serious social crisis, with impacts on all sectors of the economy. Unemployment and inflation will be just the first signs of this crisis, which will also tend to generate high unemployment rates, an increase in the homeless population, a supply crisis and several other social difficulties.
All this could have been avoided if Germany had acted sovereignly and refused to participate in the irrational anti-Russian sanctions. Without energy cooperation with Moscow, Berlin became unable to maintain its normal level of industrial production, which started the current process of economic decline. It would have been possible for Germany to maintain a pro-Western stance and at the same time avoid sanctions, following the example of countries like Hungary. However, the German government has repeatedly made it clear that Kiev is its most important priority.
In practice, Germany has deliberately agreed to destroy its economy and the well-being of its own people just to try to “isolate” Russia – in a useless gesture of “solidarity” with Kiev neo-Nazi regime. The Russian economy has not been harmed by the sanctions, nor has Ukraine in any way been favored by Western measures, but German society has been trapped in a wave of crisis from which it will not exit any time soon.
Once again, the only one to benefit from European decisions is the US. By encouraging the German self-boycott, Washington neutralized the European country that had the greatest capacity for development and economic sovereignty. Now, the entire EU is in a situation of subservience and absolute dependence on the US – which in turn does not seem interested in helping its European “partners”, but in making them even more geopolitically vulnerable.
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