Germany news: 'Germany wants to be respected' - minister

It may look like Germany’s in a huff because it failed to obtain a two-year seat on the UN Security Council. But that’s not the whole story.

The country urgently needs to save money, due to a long-lasting economic slump and soaring spending.

Almost all aspects of the federal budget are under close scrutiny, including the billions Germany feeds into the UN system on a yearly basis.

But what Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul is probably also hinting is that Germany feels underrepresented on UN bodies and commissions. And since there are always appointments being negotiated on those levels in an organisation as big as the United Nations, Wadephul likely wants to send the message that now it’s Germany’s turn.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has hinted that Berlin could rethink its contributions to the United Nations in the wake of Germany's failed bid for a temporary seat on the body's Security Council.

"It cannot be that we are one of the biggest contributors but don't have a say in certain decisions," he told the Rheinische Post newspaper in Bonn on Thursday. "So, of course, parliament will have to take a closer look at certain commitments in the budget."

Germany missed out on a rotating seat on the UN Security Council for the first ever time earlier this month when the available places in the "Western Europe and Others" group went to Portugal and Austria.

"Germany has interests and Germany wants to be respected," said Wadephul. "This is not a demand for dominance. But the United Nations must now be prepared for us to mark our position more clearly in future."

Germany's next World Cup opponents, Ivory Coast, will be without striker Elye Wahi in Toronto on Saturday after the 23-year-old was denied entry to Canada due to match-fixing allegations.

Wahi, who is under contract at German Bundesliga club Eintracht Frankfurt but was on loan at French Ligue 1 side OGC Nice last season, is currently being investigated by authorities in Marseille in connection to allegations of "organized fraud, organized sports corruption, handling of proceeds of crime and money laundering," according to a statement provided to The New York Times (NYT).

The allegations concern in particular a Ligue 1 fixture between Nice and FC Metz (0-0) on 17 May in which Wahi is alleged to have intentionally picked up a yellow card.

In a statement, the French Football League (LFP) said they had been made aware of "an unusual volume of bets relating to a booking involving the player Elye Wahi."

According to the NYT, Wahi was arrested on by French police on 29 May but was released without charge as investigations continued.

Having not been charged with a crime, his entry into the United States, where Ivory Coast are based and where Wahi started in a 1-0 win over Ecuador in Philadelphia on Sunday, was deemed unproblematic.

But Canadian authorities have taken a stricter line, as they did with Ghana's Thomas Partey who was last week denied entry due to rape and sexual abuse charges in the United Kingdom, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Wahi was born in Paris and represented France at youth level before opting to play for Ivory Coast. He has since made three appearances for the "Elephants."

The German government has been given the go-ahead by the European Commission to purchase a 40% stake in the Franco-German arms manufacturer KNDS, which produces Leopard-2 combat tanks, among other weapons systems.

The German Defense Ministry's stake in the company will therefore be equal to that held by the French government, although Berlin reportedly intends to reduce its share to 30% in the coming years.

KNDS emerged from a merger between German tank manufacturer Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and the state-owned French arms producer Nexter in 2015 — partly due to cuts in German defense spending at the time.

That policy has been reversed since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 with Germany and other European countries ramping up military expenditure. The German government recently stated its intention to build the "strongest conventional army in Europe" by 2039.

KNDS, which is headquartered in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, has 11 of its 34 factories in Germany, including in Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Thuringia, and ten in France.

The company said earlier this week that it intended to expand its presence in Germany to additional unspecified locations, while also deepening Franco-German cooperation on projects such as the new Capint combat tank.

"This solution brings together technologies from both countries," KNDS Germany chief Florian Hohenwarter told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper. "The lower part is based on the Leopard-2 from KNDS Germany while the tower is from KNDS France, at the request of the French military."

Hohenwarter predicted that the expansion of KNDS Germany will create "4,000 to 5,000" additional jobs.

However, not all Franco-German military endeavors have been a success. Earlier this month, it was announced that a cooperation between airplane giants Dassault and Airbus's Germany-based defense dvision on the planned new FCAS fighter jet had been scrapped.

A 20-month-old child was found dead in a parked car near the southern German city of Stuttgart on Wednesday, having seemingly been left in the vehicle for hours amid a heatwave.

The little girl's mother, 44, is being investigated on suspicion of manslaughter, local prosecutors confirmed.

An autopsy on Friday is expected to provide precise details as to the cause of death, but the German Meteorological Service (DWD) said that temperatures in the region had surpassed 30°C (86°F) on Wednesday.

At such temperatures, the temperature inside a parked car can reach 56°C (132°F) within an hour, according to the German ADAC automobile association, which says that "even a marginally open window cannot prevent the heat build-up in a vehicle."

Babies and small children are particularly vulnerable to such heat because they sweat less, meaning their bodies take longer to cool down, according to Germany's Federal Institute for Public Health (BIÖG), which warns: the younger the child, the greater the risk of overheating.

Concrete figures for heat deaths in cars in Germany are hard to come by but, according to the US platform "No Heat Stroke," more than 37 children on average die from heat stroke after being forgotten and left in cars every year in the United States.

German train passengers are going to have to account for extended journey times between Berlin and Hannover this autumn as rail operator Deutsche Bahn carries out planned maintenance work.

From October to December 2026 (and in the same period again in 2027), journeys between the two cities, which normally take around 100 minutes, will be up to 80 minutes longer as high-speed ICE trains are rerouted via Braunschweig and Magdeburg.

The 221-kilometer (137-mile) stretch forms part of one of Germany's most important and most frequented rail connections between the capital, Berlin, and the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the country's most populous region.

The route is used by more than 400 long-distance and regional trains per day as well as around 90 freight trains. During the maintenance work, 260 kilometers of track, 175 points systems and 13 kilometers of noise-protection walls are set to be renovated, while 25 stations are in line for a modernizing revamp.

Earlier this week, another key route between Berlin and the northern city of Hamburg was reopened after ten months (and six extra weeks) of maintenance work.

In a bid to boost its lagging punctuality rates, Deutsche Bahn is aiming to thoroughly renovate around 40 key routes across Germany by the mid-2030s. Given the poor state of the network's neglected infrastructure, closures and total revamps are considered necessary rather than carrying out work during ongoing operations.

Employment in German industry dropped to a decade low in 2025, according to a new study which found that only 6.6 million people were employed in the sector.

As a proportion of overall employment in Germany, that represented just 19% of total employment, down from 22% in 20214.

Researchers from the Bertelsmann Foundation, which commissioned the study, said the decline was due to weaker hiring activity rather than particularly large-scale redundancies.

"Declining hiring is a warning signal for future employment trends," commented Bertelsmann labor market expert Luisa Kunze. "We need a revival in labor demand in industry and more dynamism in the labor market."

German industry has also become less attractive to workers in recent years, the study found.

Wage premiums (a figure representing the extra percentage of income that employees earn simply by choosing a job in the industrial sector over an equivalent position in a different field) in German industry fell from a 20% bonus ten years ago to a mere 10% advantage in 2024, according to the study.

Germany's industrial sector has been grappling for years concerns about gradual deindustrialization, with companies increasingly shifting production abroad in response to rising costs at home.

Germany may be taking a break in between their 7-1 win over Curacao on Sunday and their second Group E game against Ivory Coast on Saturday, but two other German coaches have been in action in the United States this week.

On Tuesday night, dark horses Austria, led by German coach Ralf Rangnick, beat Jordan 3-1 in Group J.

And then on Wednesday, Thomas Tuchel's England got their Group L campaign off to a winning start with an entertaining 4-2 victory over Croatia — thanks to two goals from Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane.

"Trust the Tuchel!" quipped news magazine Der Spiegel on Thursday morning. Having won the World Cup four times, it's nice to see Germany helping their English friends in their quest for a first trophy since 1966 ..

Guten Tag! Welcome to DW's coverage of what Germany is talking about on Thursday, 18 June, 2026.

A new report has found that employment in German industry has fallen to a decade low as the sector faces higher costs and tougher competition.

And at the World Cup, Germany may not have been in action but a German coach and a Bayern Munich striker took center-stage for England.