The coronavirus crisis threatens the survival of 15 percent of German companies, according to their responses to the ifo Business Survey for November. “That’s an improvement over June, when the figure was 21 percent,” says Klaus Wohlrabe, Head of Surveys at ifo. “Nevertheless, 86 percent of travel agencies and tour operators currently feel threatened, as do 76 percent of hotels and 62 percent of restaurants.”
Tilman Pradt (Atlantic Sentinel) | Donald Trump bashing Germany is hardly surprising. It has been a constant of his presidency. The once-special partnership between Germany and the United States, which already lost some of its luster in the decades after the Cold War, sunk to a post-World War II low during his administration. Nor is Trump mistaken. Most Germans want to see him gone — with reason.
Telefónica and Allianz have reached an agreement for the creation of a joint venture to deploy Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) in Germany.Both companies will each hold 50% under a co-control governance model. It will be an independent open-access wholesale operator focused on deploying fibre in rural and semi-rural areas of Germany to tap the potential of Europe’s largest broadband market.
Banco Sabadell | Telefónica is in the final stages of negotiating an agreement to set up an independent company, which would be responsible for the deployment of a fiber optic network in Germany. The investment in the project is about 5 billion euros. Telefonica would structure the project through its subsidiary Telefonica Infra, which plans to sign an accord with an infrastructure fund and a group of financing banks around the end of October.
Lidia Conde (Frankfurt) | Are there many? Or just a few? One in five Germans believes in populist arguments or has ideas which go against the system or the elite or pluralism. Two years ago, it was one in three. According to a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation, populism is less and less popular. However, watching thousands of people demonstrating against the anti-pandemic restrictions in a country which is a model in containing the pandemic, one wonders if Germany has not gone completely mad.
Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo | Tanzania also wants reparations from Germany for the atrocities carried out between 1905 and 1907. “Other countries have been compensated for war crimes. Why not us?, said MP Cosato Chumi. Berlin acknowledges the genocide but it doesn’t want to pay reparations and it is trying to agree some formal apology with Windhoek (Namibia). Ruprecht Polenz, the German negotiator says genocide does not imply reparations, only political and moral redress. In Dodoma (Tanzania), the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas proposed “forms of mutual support” other than “compensation.” Given the concern of other former empires and the necessary paradigm shift in Euro-African relations, Merkel is in two minds about opening this Pandora’s box.
The economic growth of both economies has fallen sharply in the Q2 of the year due to the coronavirus restriction measures. Germany’s GDP saw a decrease of 11.7% on yoy rate. The country was plunged into the deepest recession in post-war history. On the other side of the Atlantic, the US GDP was down 32.9% in annualised terms, the biggest fall since the current historical series began in 1947. Spain and France accompany them with record contractions of 22,1% and 19%, respectively.
Lidia Conde (Frankfurt) | Germany takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union Council from July. The other member states’ expectations are high. All the dimensions of the health, social and economic impact of the coronavirus are still unknown. But we know that the consequences could be immense. All together to relaunch Europe” is the German Presidency’s motto and one which is not just words. Germany and its Chancellor Angela Merkel are committed to it.
Telefónica and SAP Spain have announced an agreement to promote business cloud computing services, both in the form of private cloud from Telefónica’s Infrastructures as a Service in Madrid (IaaS), and in the public cloud (SaaS). Amongst the main milestones of the partnership between the two firms is the conversion of Telefónica’s data centre into the first in Spain to offer private SAP cloud services.
Intermoney | Within the ECB, they are not forgetting the clash it has had with the German Constitutional Court, after the latter ruled the bank’s bond purchase programme is “partially unconstitutional.” In fact, it is one of the problems they have to solve before the institutional break in August. Meanwhile, the central bank’s internal forum is still debating the question of whether the buying programme had an impact on economic and financial policy. The members of the Governing Council have been discussing the pros and cons of its monetary policy.