Germany news: Merz's CDU mulls strategy on far-right AfD

German President Frank-Water Steinmeier and his Austrian counterpart Alexander Van der Bellen have urged the European Union (EU) to be more assertive and to increase military strength.

The appeal was published in a statement in Austria's Krone newspaper on Sunday.

"If we stand idly by or remain stuck in the past, the fire of the European idea threatens to be extinguished in the storm," Steinmeier warned.

"In the geopolitical turning point we are experiencing, Europe must reinvent itself," the two statesmen wrote, referring to Russia's invasion of neighboring Ukraine and Moscow's belligerence toward Europe, as well as a loss of confidence in the US under President Donald Trump.

The two presidents also called for increased military capability as well as a more robust approach to foreign policy, declaring that every EU nation must now decide whether it will stand to defend European liberal democracy or not.

In an reference to Hungary and Slovakia's warm relations with Moscow, Steinmeier and Van der Bellen wrote, "Those who feel closer to autocracies are destroying the EU from within."  

Steinmeier will embark on a three-day state visit to Austria on Tuesday, where he will attend the opening of the new German Embassy in Vienna as well as a visiting a high-profile rail construction site connecting the two countries via a tunnel under the Alps.

Hundreds of protesters gathered at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on Sunday to voice their displeasure with recent comments by Chancellor Friedrich Merz regarding migrants in Germany.

Protesters marched under the motto "We Are the Cityscape," in reference to comments made by Merz on Tuesday.

Merz tried to make up ground with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party by lauding his own conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party's progress on reforming past migration policy.

The Chancellor claimed that great strides had already been made before adding, "but we still have this problem in the cityscape, of course, and that is why the federal interior minister is facilitating and carrying out large-scale deportations."

Critics pounced on the cityscape reference as being openly racist, claiming it implied deportations should focus on migrant populations in Germany's urban centers.    

One speaker addressed the Berlin crowd on Sunday saying, "I stand here as someone whose father is Kurdish. Is my father the problem in the cityscape? Or am I?" Others yelled, "You want cityscape, here's your cityscape."

Organizers say some 5,000 people turned out, while police put the number at 800.

The historian Karl Schlögel, who has written highly acclaimed works on modern Russia and Eastern Europe, among other topics, received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Sunday. 

Schlögel, 77, is a prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of Moscow's agression against Ukraine since 2014.

The jury said Schlögel had "consistently set new standards in vivid and vibrant historical writing."  

According to Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, the chairwoman of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, which has awarded the prize since 1950, "we might have understood many things sooner if we had read Karl Schlögel earlier and more often."

The award, worth €250,000 ($292,000), was presented at St Paul's Church in Frankfurt.

Karl Schlögel recently talked with DW about the situation in Ukraine. You can read about his insights here:Peace prize winner Karl Schlögel: Europe needs a free Ukraine

Brief stoppages of take-offs and landings at Munich Airport on account of "suspicious observations" have ended, a spokewoman said on Sunday.

She said there had been little disruption from the stoppages, with three flights diverted late on Saturday evening, one of which eventually landed at Munich.

According to the spokeswoman, flight security briefly blocked operations twice late on Saturday evening after federal police reported that a number of people had observed unusual activities, without specifying what kind.

At the start of October, flights were suspended at the airport on two evenings in a row following suspected drone sightings.

Some 10,000 passengers were affected, with some sleeping the nights at the terminal on camp beds and sleeping mats.

 

Top female managers at Germany's largest companies saw their salaries drop sharply in 2024, while men earned slightly more, reversing a two-decade-old trend, according to a study by the consulting firm EY seen by the DPA news agency. 

Several years ago, there were few women working on the boards of stock exchange companies, meaning they could demand very high salaries that at times exceeded those of men.

But that has changed, said EY partner Jens Massmann.

 "The times when female board members were a rare species and could demand very high salaries are over," he said.

The study showed salaries of female board members in the three DAX indices, DAX, MDax and SDax, fell to an average of €2.15 million ($2.51 million) in 2024 excluding chief executive positions.

That represents a drop of 11% over the previous year. 

Their male colleagues, however, saw a slight increase of 0.4% to €2.27 million.

The study listed the highest-paid female managers as Merck boss Belen Garijo with €7.6 million, followed by Deutsche Bank board member Rebecca Short with €6.5 million and Helen Giza, the chief executive of Fresenius Medical Care, with €5.7 million.

For the study, EY analysed the total remuneration, comprising fixed salary as well as short and long-term bonuses.
 

Deutsche Bahn's new CEO, Evelyn Palla, says she plans to oversee a complete restructuring of the company in a bid to radically improve its quality.

"We are turning the company upside down: I am aiming for a complete fresh start," Palla told the Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

"For this, we need to do everything differently than before."

"I am reviewing every job for its added value to our customers. The administration must serve the railway workers," she said.

"My goal is less bureaucracy at Deutsche Bahn and significantly more room for doers," she went on.

"Decisions will in future be made where the responsibility lies, not three floors higher."

Palla also talked of improvements for rail customers, saying dirty trains and stations and non-functioning on-board bistros should become a thing of the past.

She said Deutsche Bahn would also introduce a digital "construction site tracker" so passengers could better plan their journeys.

Palla took over the top position at the state-run rail operator on October 1, succeeding Dr. Richard Lutz.

Germany's railway network, once famous for its reliability, has come under intense criticism in the past few years, with delays or even cancellations becoming ever more frequent as a result of what critics say has been massive underinvestment over two decades.

 

The executive board of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) is to begin a two-day meeting focused on how the party should deal with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead of five regional elections next year.

The AfD is by far the strongest party in voter surveys, with ratings of around 40%, in the eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where new regional parliaments are to be elected next year.

The CDU meeting comes after several politicians from the party called for it to drop its 2018 resolution to reject coalitions and similar forms of cooperation with the AfD or the far-left Left Party.

Ahead of the meeting, Merz has, however, doubled down on that resolution, telling a town hall meeting in the western town of Meschede that "there is no common ground between the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the AfD."

Merz pointed to wide differences, including the AfD's opposition to the European Union, the eurozone, NATO and conscription.

"It is against everything that has made the Federal Republic of Germany great and strong over the past eight decades," he said, saying that there would be no cooperation "at least not under me as leader of the CDU in Germany."

Merz and CDU Secretary General Carsten Linnemann are to present the results of the committee meeting at a press conference on Monday.

DW resumes its reporting on events in Germany as Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) holds a top-echelon meeting to discuss its policy toward the far-right AfD ahead of upcoming regional elections.

Germany's rail network, plagued by delays and failing infrastructure, is also in the news as the new head of Deutsche Bahn (DB) announces "a fresh start."

You can read more here about the talk of the day in Germany on Sunday, October 19.
 

The parliamentary leader of Friedrich Merz's CDU/CSU conservative bloc has backed the chancellor's controversial remarks on migration's impact on German cities.

"The chancellor actually said something everyone can see when they walk through Duisburg, but also when they walk through some medium-sized German cities," Jens Spahn told the German mass-circulation Bild newspaper. 

"Irregular migration has changed something," Spahn said.

Earlier this week, Merz said the number of refugees fleeing to Germany had fallen since he took office in May, "but we still have this problem in the cityscape, and that is why the interior minister is working to carry out large-scale deportations."

In a letter to Merz, politicians from the opposition Green party demanded a public apology for the "racist, discriminatory, hurtful and indecent" remarks.

Previously, when Germans wanted to point out how crazy something is, they would naturally use German and say "Das ist verrückt." Young Germans, however, now prefer to say, "Das crazy."

Selected by Germany's youth as their trendiest slang of the year, the expression "das crazy" beat two other shortlisted favorites, "goonen" and "checkst du."

Read more about how young Germans are adapting and breaking traditional rules of the language.

Authorities in the German city of Görlitz in Saxony are investigating a suspected book burning at a memorial for the victims of fascism.

Police and state security officials are probing the incident, which came to light on Thursday.

It is unclear exactly when the books were set on fire, what their content was or who was behind the incident.

Görlitz Mayor Octavian Ursu condemned the act, calling for those responsible to be punished. He likened it to the Nazi book burnings of 1933, saying it will not be tolerated in his city.

More and more parents are making inquiries at German counselling centers for conscientious objectors as politicians continue to debate ways of increasing the size of the country's armed forces.

"We are currently being inundated with inquiries," Michael Schulze von Glasser, political director of the German Peace Society—United War Resisters (DFGVK), told the RND news network.

He said the number of visits to the society's website rose to over 125,000 in September, compared with 55,000 in August and 24,151 in May, with a growing number of parents among those making the inquiries.

Membership was also going up, he said.

A spokesperson for the Evangelical Working Group for Conscientious Objection and Peace (EAK) also told the RND that it has seen a recent surge in inquiries.

This comes as the parliament debates the return of a form of military service, which was suspended in 2011, to strengthen Germany's armed forces to counter a growing threat from Russia.

US singer Katy Perry has kicked off a four-concert Germany tour with a performance at the ZAG Arena in the central-northern city of Hannover.

The ensuing concerts in Germany, which are scheduled to take place in Berlin (October 21), Cologne (October 23) and Munich (October 31), form part of the 40-year-old singer's "The Lifetimes Tour," which started in April in Mexico and is planned to conclude in the UAF in December.

The tour is to promote Perry's seventh studio album, "143" — a title representing the phrase "I love you" and the singer's "angel number" — which has, however, achieved comparatively little success so far in Germany, reaching just number 16 on the album charts.

Perry is expected to perform acrobatic stunts during each concert as she did in Hannover. These include flying through the air on wires and riding a metallic creature.

The head of the Jordanian branch of the UN's refugee agency, Maria Stavropoulou, has warned against compelling Syrian refugees to go back to their home country despite the fall of dictator Bashar Assad late last year.

"It is better to leave the decision about the right time to return to the refugees themselves," she told the German Protestant news agency EPD.

She said forcing refugees to return could have a destabilizing effect on Syria.

"The problem is that many people, in Germany as well, think that the refugee problem in Syria is solved. That is very far from the truth," she said.

According to Stavropoulou, Syria remains in a very fragile state and still lacks the infrastructure to take back so many returning nationals at one time.

"Many people return to their villages and find that their houses have been completely destroyed," she said, adding that more than a million Syrians had already returned home from neighboring countries.

Exiled Syrians in vulnerable situation

Stavropoulou also warned that new conflicts between different ethnic groups were likely that could force people to flee once more.

She also pointed out that many Syrians were in a vulnerable situation after many years in exile and did not have enough money to start over again.

Several politicians in Germany have called for Syrian refugees to be repatriated to their home country following the fall of Assad and the end of the civil war in the Middle Eastern country.

Some 1.5 million Syrians are living in Germany, many of whom came in 2015 amid their country's deadly civil conflict under the liberal refugee policy of former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Germany's flagship airline, Lufthansa, is considering cutting several flight routes as increasingly unprofitable, its CEO says.

"Without a reduction of locational costs, more cuts will be unavoidable," Lufthansa's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), Carsten Spohr, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

"There are about 100 inner-German flights per week that could also be dropped in the coming summer," he said.

Spohr said that a doubling of state-imposed taxes and fees since 2019 had made flight operations within Germany unprofitable.

"Connections like the one from Munich to Münster/Osnabrück or from Munich to Dresden are under review," he said.

"We fly these routes every day at a loss," he added.