Germany news: Merz starts Gulf trip with Saudi Arabia visit

There have been protests in several German cities over the eight-year prison sentence handed down by a Budapest court to German anti-fascist activist Maja T.  (see entries below).

In Berlin, protesters gathered in the Kreuzberg district and marched with banners. Police reported that there were about 550 people taking part in the protest.

There were also demonstrations and acts of solidarity in Hamburg, Dresden, Erfurt and Potsdam.

Police said around 500 people were involved in protests in Leipzig. Demonstrators called for the activist to be returned to Germany.

The Budapest City Court convicted and sentenced Maja T. for involvement in attacks on alleged right-wing extremists in Budapest in February 2023.

Politicians from The Left party, the Greens and the Social Democrats have called for Maja T to be returned to Germany.

A stash of cocaine weighing 58 kilograms with a street value of €4.6 million ($5.42 million) has been discovered during a lorry inspection in Kiel, northern Germany.

The drugs were found concealed in moving boxes and stashed among cargo at the lorry's loading area, the customs office in Kiel said.

A 63-year-old Cuban national, who was driving, told authorities that the load was picked up in Hamburg.

"In drug trafficking, increasingly professionally organized transports are used within regular goods traffic," said Robert Dütsch, head of the Kiel customs office.

The drugs were seized and the driver was taken into custody while further investigations take place.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has touched down in Saudi Arabia for the start of his gulf visit that will also see him visit Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Ahead of his departure, Merz said he sought closer partnerships with the Gulf region  and was looking to expand dialogue with the three states.

"We need such partnerships more than ever at a time when major powers are increasingly shaping global politics," Merz said before setting off for Riyadh.

Merz acknowledged that while partners did not necessarily share the same values and interests "they do share the understanding that we need an order in which we can rely on agreements and treat each other with respect," he said.

German anti-fascist activist Maja T. has been sentenced to eight years in prison for attacks on suspected far-right extremists in Budapest, a Hungarian court ruled.

Maja T. was found guilty of involvement in physical attacks by far-left activists on the sidelines of an international gathering of neo-Nazis in Hungary's capital in February 2023.

Nine people were injured in a total of five attacks, including four of them seriously.

The 25-year-old anti-fascist activist and was found guilty of attempted grievous bodily harm and membership of a criminal organization. The verdict is not yet final.

The German citizen was arrested in Berlin in December 2023 and extradited to Hungary in June 2024 after Germany's Federal Constitutional Court was too late in its bid to prevent the extradition.

Last year, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled the trial should not be taking place in Hungary. The German court in Karlsruhe found that insufficient checks were made before Maja T. was extradited to ensure that the conditions of detention in Hungary would be humane — especially in view of the fact that Maja T. is non-binary.

Amnesty International has called on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz not to ignore human rights abuses being committed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as he embarks on a three-day visit to the Gulf.

Katja Müller-Fahlbusch, Amnesty expert for the Middle East and North Africa, said the German government "must not keep making the same mistake of strengthening regimes which are carrying out systematic human rights abuses in the name of supposed stability."

Despite some relaxations of restrictions on social life and some strengthening of women's rights, there reports of extrajudicial killings, torture and arbitrary arrests in Saudi Arabia remain.

According to Amnesty, more than 180 people were executed in the first half of 2025 alone, the majority for drug offenses. "That is clear breach of international law," Müller-Fahlbusch told Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper, adding that human rights activists had also been jailed for years after "unfair trials."

Qatar was particularly in the spotlight in 2022 as allegations of abuse and exploitation of migrant workers and unexplained deaths made headlines ahead of the FIFA World Cup. Despite some reforms, human rights activists say that methods that promote abuse persist.

Meanwhile, the UAE reportedly continues to supply arms to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan, the rebel paramilitary group whose forces have committed documented war crimes on a vast scale against members of non-Arab ethnicities.

Amnesty expert Müller-Fahlbusch called on Merz to "publicly denounce these issues and demand respect for universal human rights in the Gulf states."

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said he was "shocked, shaken and deeply saddened" by the death of a train conductor after he was attacked by a passenger.

"The increasing violence against public service employees and other service providers, such as railway employees, must be met with decisive consequences," he said. 

"I expect the perpetrator to be punished with the full force of the law for his brutal act." 

Dobrindt called called for "significantly" tightening protection for employees of service companies. 

"The range of penalties must be expanded and the minimum penalties for attacks significantly increased," he added.

German airline Lufthansa has announced that it is commissioning new research into the company's Nazi past as it prepares to mark its 100th anniversary.

The modern-day Lufthansa was founded in 1953 and is, legally speaking, a separate entity to the original Deutsche Lufthansa AG which was founded in 1926 and went on to play a key role in the Third Reich before being dissolved in 1945.

Nevertheless, the modern-day Lufthansa still sees itself as the traditional successor to the original airline, using its name, colors and iconic crane emblem.

"Lufthansa was absolutely part of the [Nazi] system," said chairman Carsten Spohr. "We're proud of what we are today, but blanking out those difficult, dark, terrible years would simply be dishonest."

As part of the celebrations marking the centenary, Lufthansa has commissioned a new study into its Nazi past, including its role in the secret the rearmament of the German air force (Luftwaffe), its integration into Germany's wartime economy and its scrupulous exploitation of slave laborers in its factories.

"Lufthansa was a national socialist enterprise which went under with the regime to which it had chained itself," said German historian Manfred Grieger, whose fresh research, conducted with colleagues Hartmut Berghoff and Jörg Lesczenski, will be presented in a new book to be published in March.

It's not the first such history to be commissioned by Lufthansa. At the turn of the century, the German air travel historian Lutz Budrass found clear evidence of forced labor as well as continuities in personnel between the "old" Lufthansa and the new, which the airline refused to acknowledge.

Today, chairman Spohr says the treatment of Budrass and his work damaged Lufthansa. "Whatever is revealed, transparency must be expected of us as company managers."

This week, Chancellor Friedrich Merz will visit Saudi Arabia, then Qatar, and finally the Emirates — all within less than 72 hours. His aim is to deepen economic ties and secure reliable agreements at a time when Europe, and Germany in particular, can no longer be certain how much it can depend on the United States.

The magic word for German relations in the Gulf is, time and again: energy.

For decades, the Gulf states supplied oil to resource‑poor Germany, and since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, gas has become ever more crucial.

The EU has sharply reduced its reliance on Russian gas; today, liquefied natural gas (LNG) accounts for about 10% of Germany's overall supply, with 30% of that in 2024 coming from the US. A share which, in the view of the German government, could well be reduced — if, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were to deliver more.

Read DW's full analysis here. 

The average, publicly-insured German patient in 2024 waited, on average, 42 days to see a specialist doctor, the Rheinische Post newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing official figures obtained in response to a parliamentary query submitted by the opposition Left Party.

Five years earlier, in 2019, the average waiting time between seeing a general practitioner and referral to a specialist was 33 days.

At the same time, expenditure by Germany's statutory health insurers (Krankenkassen) has increased, with extra funding for doctors' consultation periods increasing from around €291 million in 2020 to around €814 million in 2023. This is a result of some clinics being obliged to offer at least five hours of open consultation without appointment per week, according to the German Health Ministry.

"The regulations for better treatment and faster appointments are a non-starter," said a spokeswoman for the opposition Left Party, criticizing the government's health policy and calling on the conservative-led ruling coalition to "finally take action" and analyze how medical treatment in Germany is "actually developing.

A train conductor has died after being attacked by a passenger during a routine ticket inspection on a train near the southwestern German city of Kaiserslautern.

Germany's railway and transport union has called for greater security for staff as violence and abuse increases.

Read the full story here.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz embarked on a three-day trip to the Gulf region on Wednesday, where he is set to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The trip comes on the back of visits to Africa and Latin America at the end of last year and after a trip to India in January (see video), as Merz looks to strengthen Germany's partnerships with counties outside the European Union and NATO.

"We want to intensify our relationships with countries who want to work with us and who have comparable perceptions of rules-based international trade," said a government spokesman.

Topics on the agenda in the Gulf are expected to include oil and gas supplies, arms exports and geopolitical diplomacy, including the ongoing conflicts and crises in the Palestinian territories, Iran and Ukraine.

Since the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE have become key players in global trade and foreign affairs. Indeed, the latest round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, mediated by the United States, is set to take place in Abu Dhabi, the UAE's capital, on Wednesday and Thursday, before Merz's arrival there on Friday.

Neither Germany (nor any European countries) are involved in those talks, but all three Gulf countries are key export markets for the German arms industry, while Qatar is an important mediator for Berlin when it comes to the repatriation of Afghans to Afghanistan.

Guten Morgen! Welcome to DW's coverage of what Germany is talking about on Wednesday, February 4.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is setting off on a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates where he is looking to strengthen partnerships beyond the European Union.

Back in Germany, airline Lufthansa has announced fresh research into its Nazi past as it celebrates its 100th anniversary.