Germany news: Police to be allowed to shoot down drones

Police in Germany will soon be allowed to shoot down drones that are violating the country's airspace. Verena Jackson, a senior researcher at the Munich University of the Federal Armed Forces, also known as the Bundeswehr University, shares her insights with DW.

A major police operation took place in the western German city of Paderborn on Wednesday afternoon, after a female student at a technical college was stabbed, seemingly by a 25-year-old man. 

The attack took place in the facility's sports hall, police said in a statement, and the first emergency call reached them at 1:15 p.m. local time (1115 UTC/GMT). 

"Afterwards the attacker fled from the scene in an unknown direction," police said, helping to explain the broad response in the city. 

Students and staff were told to shelter in the college in the immediate aftermath of the attack but were told to leave in an orderly manner later in the afternoon. 

The victim suffered life-threatening injuries and was undergoing emergency surgery. 

"During the search operations, the fleeing suspect presented himself to police and was provisionally detained ... at around 14:00," police wrote. 

The suspect is a 25-year-old with German citizenship, who police believe was also a student at the technical college. 

"The background to the crime is not yet clear and is a component of the ongoing investigations," police said, adding that searches and investigations continued at the scene.

The mayor-elect of the Ruhr valley town of Herdecke, Iris Stalzer, is out of life-threatening danger and has named her adopted daughter as her attacker, police and prosecutors said at a press conference in nearby Hagen on Wednesday. 

The 57-year-old local politician was airlifted to the hospital around lunch time on Tuesday, found in her home with multiple stab wounds. 

Police said that Stalzer had been able to answer questions late on Tuesday from her hospital bed.

Investigators said little about the possible motive or reason for the family argument, noting that the suspects were minors and that the case had only garnered so much attention because of Stalzer's position in local politics and the possibility of a political motive to the attack. 

Read the full story here. 

Germany's Federal Cartel Office on Wednesday announced an investigation into Chinese e-commerce giant Temu, saying it wanted to examine conditions for traders and the company's treatment of the suppliers it relies upon to sell products. 

"Each month more than 100 million users from European marketplaces visit temu.com," Andreas Mundt, the president of the competition watchdog, said in a statement. "For almost a year now the trading platform for German suppliers is also open. We are pursuing the suspicion that Temu could be setting unacceptable conditions for pricing for traders on the German marketplace." 

Temu has an estimated 19.3 million active users in Germany, the equivalent of well over one quarter of the adult population.

The German government has increased its growth forecasts, saying it expected economic growth to narrowly avoid stagnation in 2025 before enjoying more pronounced growth in 2026.

The last government projection in April predicted zero growth for 2025 for Europe's largest economy, but Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said on Wednesday that this had been upgraded to 0.2%, with the estimate for 2026 raised from 1% to 1.3%.

"We need the courage to take decisive reforms," she told a press conference presenting the projections, pointing to the need to lower energy prices and lower taxes in order to spur further growth.

Germany's manufacturing sector has been struggling under the weight of high energy prices, fierce foreign competition and the effects of new US tariffs on EU products.

Earlier on Wednesday, official data showed a sharp decline in industrial production in August, particularly in the automotive sector, which is facing stiff competition from China in particular.

Germany will not agree to European Union plans for so-called "chat controls" that would enable authorities to scan messages for illegal content such as child pornography before they are encrypted by apps such as WhatsApp or Signal.

"Arbitrary chat controls ought to be taboo in a democracy," said Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig of the Social Democrats (SPD), the junior partner in the coalition government, on Wednesday.

For three years now, European politicians have been wrangling over proposed legislation to allow pre-encryption message scanning with the aim of combatting crimes such as the distribution of child pornography — but have been unable to reach a compromise.

EU member state ambassadors are set to discuss the latest proposals on Wednesday evening and, should an agreement be reached, the relevant ministers could vote on legislation as early as next week.

But the stance of the most populous member states, such as Germany, will be decisive and it had been unclear where exactly Berlin stood on the issue — until now.

"Germany will not agree to such suggestions at EU level," Hubig said.

Even if the ambassadors were to reach an agreement, any legislation would still have to be voted on by the European Parliament, where there is cross-party opposition to the "chat controls."

Messenger service providers and data protection experts have also voiced criticism.

On Wednesday, a conference of independent German data protection watchdogs in Berlin called on the German government to reject the EU plans that they said would circumvent encryption and bring about "an end to the private sphere as we know it."

Revenues from German dog taxes rose by 2.2% in 2024 compared to the previous year, and over the last 10 years by 39.3% — well above levels of inflation.

Local municipalities, which set the levies, brought in roughly €430 million (roughly $500 million), compared to €309 million in 2014, according to the German government's statistics agency Destatis.

The fees can vary quite drastically from place to place, and often increase if individuals own multiple dogs or own what German authorities classify as "attack dogs" — larger races suited to combat or defensive purposes like pitbulls, bull terriers, mastiffs, or tosa inus.

Berlin, for instance, charges €120 per year for a first dog, €180 for all subsequent dogs and no surcharge for attack dogs. Munich, on the other hand, charges a flat fee of €100 for all dogs, but a whopping €800 for attack dogs.

The idea behind the tax is to fund local services like rescue, and the attack dog surcharge is supposed to help limit the number of larger dogs in a community. 

Destatis also noted that other, more significant costs of dog ownership have also been rising more rapidly than inflation in recent years.

Not unlike human food, average dog and cat food costs in Germany were 2.2% higher than the previous year, and 35.3% higher in 2024 than in 2020.

Overall inflation in that same period stands at 19.3%, Destatis said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's ministers have agreed on an amendment to policing legislation that would boost the federal police's defense capabilities — if passed by parliament.

A draft of the revised legislation, as reported by the Reuters news agency, reads:

"In order to combat a threat posed by unmanned aerial systems on land, in the air or on water, the federal police may deploy appropriate technical means against the system, its control unit or its control connection if other means of combatting the threat would be futile or otherwise significantly more difficult."

In other words: the police will be allowed to destroy drones in the air, water or on land as it sees fit.

In the coming weeks, amendments to aerial security legislation are expected to clarify the role of the German military, the Bundeswehr, in helping police combat drones – as was requested when drones were sighted over Munich Airport at the weekend.

Among the questions will be whether the Bundeswehr would be permitted to shoot down a drone which has been identified as a threat above German territory, for instance if the drone was at an altitude beyond the reach of police capabilities.

According to the German constitution, the Bundeswehr is strictly a defensive army whose role is explicitly limited to protecting the state from external military threats in war-like scenarios.

German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has promised a "marathon of reforms" as the government looks to plug a hole of over €30 billion ($34.6 billion) in federal finances.

"I believe our citizens know that there have to be changes; they can handle straight language and understand that we can't plug that gap without cuts," said Klingbeil, the most senior Social Democrat (SPD) in the conservative-led coalition government.

"But, as a Social Democrat, I also say: These reforms have to be fair," Klingbeil said. "If the impression emerges that only one section of society is doing its part, we will lose trust."

Klingbeil said the SPD would support cuts to welfare and unemployment benefits and also push for higher taxes on high earners in a "mutual package" with Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the allied Christian Social Union.

But, Klingbeil said, the "autumn of reforms" proposed by CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann is insufficient.

"To be honest, that is not ambitious enough for me," Klingbeil told media outlet t-online on Wednesday.

"We can't just have one autumn, three months, in which we put our foot on the gas and then that's it," Klingbeil said. "The dismantling of bureaucracy and the acceleration of planning and authorization processes will keep the coalition occupied for the entire parliament.

"And I will be pushing for everyone to play their part."

Local police say they do not believe that a knife attack on Tuesday that left the newly elected mayor of a German town with life-threatening injuries was politically motivated.

Iris Stalzer, of the Social Democrats (SPD), was found seriously injured at her home after suffering several stab wounds just a week after being elected as the new mayor of Herdecke in the postindustrial Ruhr Valley in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany.

But investigators suspect the background to the incident may be domestic rather than political.

"Given what we know so far, there are no signs that this was a politically motivated act," said police.

The 57-year-old Stalzer is a mother of two teenage children, aged 15 and 17, who police say were taken in for questioning by investigators.

According to the German dpa news agency, citing sources from security circles, neighbors reported hearing a heated argument between the 15-year-old and his mother prior to the incident.

Stalzer's husband was reportedly abroad at the time and only returned on Tuesday evening.

Police would not confirm whether the two children were being treated as witnesses or suspects, saying only that the pair were being looked after.

Stalzer was reportedly still in critical condition on Tuesday night.

Guten Tag! Welcome to DW's coverage of what Germany is talking about on Wednesday, October 8, 2025.

German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has warned of a "marathon of reforms" as the government looks to plug a gaping hole in the state's finances.

Meanwhile, police are not treating the stabbing that left a newly elected town mayor critically injured on Tuesday as politically motivated.