Just a few years ago, the German economy was the envy of the world. With strong growth, leading exports, and a balanced budget, the European Union’s largest economy was doing incredibly well, growing faster than the neighboring United Kingdom and France. However, Germany is becoming a European laggard, experiencing a recession in 2023 and poised to grow more slowly than all OECD member states in 2024, excluding the similarly sluggish United Kingdom. Three key energy factors help explain this economic slump: disruptions to Russian natural gas imports since the invasion of Ukraine, the closing of existing nuclear power plants, and the slow transition to renewable energies.
From Crisis to Miracle to Crisis Again
The current economic slump is not the first time modern Germany has been forced to confront large-scale and systemic economic challenges. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the country’s leadership faced the…
