Germany news: Berlin sends soldiers to fortify Poland border

Black and Muslim people are disproportionately discriminated against on the real estate market in Germany, according to a new study. Just having a foreign-sounding name can lead to fewer apartment viewings.

Read more about the obstacles people who are not white Germans face in finding housing.

German authorities have arrested five men suspected of planning an attack on a Christmas market, the German DPA news agency and other outlets cited the Munich public prosecutor's office as saying Saturday. 

Read DW's full story on the arrests here.

Affordable housing is rare in Germany. 40% of households spend over a third of their income on rent. But in Augsburg, some have paid almost no rent for over 500 years!

A man suspected of stabbing a young mother and her four small children has been apprehended in Germany's industrial Ruhr valley, police announced on Saturday.

The woman and her four children have been hospitalized in critical but stable condition.

State prosecutors in the city of Bergkamen say the 20-year-old suspect was arrested while hiding in his basement. Police had previously published photos of the suspect online and on social media.

Authorities say the suspect attacked a 26-year-old mother and her four children — ages three, five, seven and eight — with a knife at their home earlier in the day before fleeing the scene.

Police say the suspect likely knew the woman and her children, though they say his motive remains unclear at the moment.

Germany's health minister has called for stronger action to address unequal treatment of women in medical care and research.

Nina Warken of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) told the Rheinische Post newspaper it was alarming that women's needs had only recently been taken into account in clinical studies.

She noted that women often show different symptoms than men, including in cardiovascular disease, and that medicines can work differently in female bodies.

She said these differences were still insufficiently covered in medical studies and training and called for the knowledge gap to be closed as quickly as possible.

Warken said her ministry has set aside €11.5 million ($13.5 million) in funding through 2029 to support research aimed at improving care for women, adding that additional funds are available through the research ministry led by Dorothee Baer.

Beyond research, Warken said she wants greater political attention on conditions that primarily affect women, including severe menstrual pain, the effects of endometriosis, and menopause.

This is not the first time that Chancellor Merz warned of the tectonic changes that are already affecting Germany and Europe.

As Ukraine negotiations zoom in on Berlin, where Trump's chief negotiator Steve Witkoff is expected to meet Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, Merz's words resonate all the more. Even here, among delegates of his traditionally inward-looking conservative CSU sister party in Bavaria.

Merz's warnings were in part strikingly similar to Angela Merkel's sober assessment of Trump's intentions. When she returned from her first visit to see the new US President in 2017, she warned of Trump's America turning its back on Europe. But Merz goes much further.

He underlines his assessment that Europe "is no longer in peace" with Russia by comparing the situation in Ukraine to 1938, when Germany first annexed Austria, then parts of Czechoslovakia, and Britain and France tolerated Germany’s aggression, hoping Hitler would stop there. He didn't.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue his advance if Ukraine is defeated.

Speaking on Saturday at the party conference of the Bavarian conservative Christian Social Union in Munich, Merz said Putin would not stop and argued that the war was about redrawing Europe’s borders and restoring the former Soviet sphere of influence.

Merz said this course posed a serious military threat to countries that were once part of that empire, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are now members of NATO and the EU, as well as other former Warsaw Pact states.

He has also warned Europe to prepare for a lasting shift in relations with the United States.

"The decades of Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe, and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists as we knew it. And nostalgia won't change that," he told a party congress in the southern city of Munich.

Merz warned strongly against making major concessions to Moscow in its war against Ukraine.

Diplomatic efforts to end the war have been intensifying. US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Berlin over the weekend to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders.

Fewer tourists have visited Berlin this year, leaving the city set to miss a key milestone in 2025, the head of its tourism agency has said.

Burkhard Kieker, chief executive of Visit Berlin, told the Tagesspiegel that overnight stays would end up just below 30 million.

Berlin recorded 30.6 million overnight stays in 2024.

By the end of October, the Berlin-Brandenburg Statistics Office had counted 24.8 million stays, down 4.1% from the same period last year.

Kieker said the slower recovery was mainly due to weak consumer sentiment in Germany and Europe and a lack of broader economic momentum.

He added that traffic at Berlin-Brandenburg Airport remained about 30% below pre-coronavirus levels, while tourism overall was still around 9% below 2019 levels.

Germany has announced plans for its armed forces, the Bundeswehr, to help secure Poland’s eastern border with Belarus and Russia.

The Defense Ministry said on Saturday that several dozen German soldiers were set to join Poland's Operation Eastern Shield from April 2026, with the mission initially running until the end of 2027.

A ministry spokesperson said the core task of the German troops in northern and eastern Poland would be engineering work.

This was described as building positions, digging trenches, laying barbed wire and constructing anti-tank obstacles. No further duties are planned.

The operation has been underway since May 2024 in border areas with Moscow ally Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.

The measures are aimed at strengthening defenses against a possible attack on NATO member Poland.

The deployment does not require parliamentary approval, the ministry said, because it is not considered an armed foreign mission under German law and is not expected to expose troops to direct military confrontation.

Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in Bonn.

Danke schön for joining us as Germany plans to send several dozen Bundeswehr soldiers to support Poland's border defenses with Belarus and Russia.

The troops are set to join Poland’s Operation Eastern Shield from April 2026, carrying out engineering tasks such as digging trenches, laying barbed wire and building anti-tank obstacles.

The mission is planned to run until the end of 2027 and does not require parliamentary approval, as it is not classified as an armed foreign deployment.

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