Germany updates: Young people make up just 10% of population

DW’s correspondent Matthew Moore has been reporting from Dresden, where a former assistant to a lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gone on trial charged with spying for China.

The aide Jian G. entered the courtroom slowly, said Moore, wearing a mask to conceal his face from the cameras.

"His demeanor belied the gravity of the charges he faces," said Moore.

The court heard that G., in his role as an aide to far-right AfD politician Maximilian Krah, had gathered classified information about EU issues related to China, as well as details about the private lives of AfD leaders. All of that was then passed on to employees of the Chinese intelligence service.

Addressing the court, G.'s lawyer said the timing of his client's arrest, shortly before European elections in 2024, had the whiff of political involvement.

In a statement read out in court, co-defendant Jaqi X told judges that she had had an affair with G. around 2015 shortly after moving to Germany.

She said he was "obsessed with money" and described himself to her as someone "who lived in the darkness". After their romance broke down, they remained friends.

Around 2022, Jaqi X is alleged to have began passing G. details about German arms deliveries to Israel and Ukraine through her job at an airport.

At the end of last year, only 10% of Germany's population consisted of people aged between 15 and 24, figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) show.

The figure represents a record low that has not sunk further mostly because of the immigration of mostly young people following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

If that immigration had not occurred, the proportion of young people in the German population would be even lower, at 8.5%, Destatis said.

The highest proportion of young people, 20.7%, was to be found among those who were born in Germany to parents who both immigrated.

The city-states of Bremen and Hamburg and the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg had the most residents in the young age bracket at the end of 2024, but even there, the highest proportion was just over 11%.

The former East German states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony-Anhalt had the lowest proportion of young people at just under 9%.

The figure puts Germany below the average of 10.7% across all 27 EU member states.

In the bloc, Ireland has the highest proportion of 15 to 24-year-olds at 12.6%, while Bulgaria has the lowest at 9.2%.

The director of Nuremberg Zoo, Dag Encke, has received numerous death threats, 10 of them concrete, after it became known that baboons from the zoo had been killed because of overcrowding and fed to  lions and tigers.

The threats came via social media, e-mail and by letter, the zoo said.

Some of the threats were also directed at the deputy director of the zoo or at staff generally. The zoo said it was taking measures to protect its employees and that all concrete threats had been reported to police.

A police spokeswoman said that 170 posts, messages or letters were being examined.

The zoo is also facing more than 350 official complaints to the public prosecutor's office about the killing of the animals.

A spokeswoman for the office said it was looking into whether the culling occurred for reasons that can be justified under Germany's animal protection law.

Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion prioritize job opportunities over welfare benefits when choosing a country to relocate to, a study indicates.

"The prospect of a position that matches their own qualification and a higher level of salary have a much stronger effect on the decision of refugees on what country they go to than social welfare or other state benefits," wrote the authors of the study by the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research.

The presence of friends or families in a destination country were also more important to Ukrainian refugees than that country's geographical proximity to Ukraine, the study suggested.

The results from the study come as debate continues in Germany over cutting welfare to recipients from Ukraine, with notably conservative Bavarian Premier Markus Söder calling for Ukrainians to received lower benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, as opposed to the citizen's allowance that they are currently granted.

The citizen's allowance or "Bürgergeld" in Germany is a state welfare benefit given to those with little or no income to ensure a minimum standard of living.

Yvonne Giesing, the deputy head of the Ifo Center for Migration and Development Economics, said the study results indicated that the welfare debate was of little importance, while adding that "cutting state benefits could also have long-term negative effects on integration."

Nuremberg Zoo killed 12 baboons due to overcrowding and dismembered six of them before feeding them to predators — removing heads, hands, and feet.

The move has triggered widespread upset and legal complaints.

Read the full story about how Nuremberg Zoo sparked outrage by feeding baboons to lions, tigers and wolves.

The South American nutria, a semiaquatic rodent that is considered an invasive species in Europe, is continuing to spread within Germany, according to the German Hunting Association (DJV).

The animal was found in 35% of 23,000 monitored hunting districts in 2023, the DJV said, double the figure in 2015.

The highest presence was found in the city-state of Bremen, at 93%, a sixfold increase over 2015, and in Hamburg at 73%.

Nutrias were found living in 60% of hunting districts in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while 55% of districts in Lower Saxony and 50% of those in Saxony-Anhalt had populations of the rodent, which the DJV says undermines riverbanks and dikes with its burrowing and destroys reed belts.

The beaver-like, usually crepuscular or nocturnal creatures are also known to transmit diseases to humans and other animals, mainly through water contamination. They have also been known to attack humans and dogs when cornered.

The DJV called for the nutria to be included in German national hunting legislation. Most states already have a hunting season for the animal or special permits.

"Owing to illegal feeding, climatic advantages and hunting limits, nutrias can now be found particularly frequently in urban areas, where they often become active during daytime as well and have a great potential for reproducing," the DJV said.

Nutria populations mostly have their origins in animals that escaped from farms where they are kept for their fur.

A German court is expected to give its verdict on Tuesday afternoon on whether spirits maker Berentzen copied rival drink producer Paulaner in its design of a cola-orange soft-drink bottle.

Paulaner, one of Germany's top beer producers, claims Berentzen copied the colorful wave design used on bottles holding its "Spezi" cola-mix for Berentzen's Mio Mio Cola+Orange soft drink.

The case is potentially worth €250,000 ($289,000).

Berentzen has argued that soft drinks commonly employ colorful packaging and that its design does not feature waves but circular shapes.

Paulaner, which claims the design infringes trademark law, won a similar case against beverage maker Karlsberg in March.

The first half of 2025 saw a big rise in the number of people calling in sick to work amid a surge in colds and flus, according to an analysis by German health insurance company DAK.

The number of working days missed because of respiratory illness rose by 13% in comparison with the same period last year, with January and February the months with the most sick days registered.

The figures from DAK showed that on average, 54 of 1,000 employees it insures were written off sick every day from January to June, slightly down on the same period in 2024.

Respiratory illnesses were the cause of 22.4% of the sick days, while mental illnesses such as depression, along with muscular and skeletal disorders such as back pain, accounted for 17%. 

Most of the people absent for reason of illness worked in the fields of aged or child care, while those in IT-related professions called in sick the least.

The analysis used data on sick days from 2.25 million people insured with DAK.
 

The stricter policies on migration recently introduced by Germany are starting to show their effects, according to Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner, the head of government in the city-state.

"We are seeing a significant relief in the influx of refugees," saod Wegner, a member of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), to which Chancellor Friedrich Merz also belongs.

He told the DPA news agency that twice the number of people were currently leaving Berlin than that of people arriving, with the city now having some 6,000 vacant beds for refugees.

"The pressure in Berlin has eased a little," he said.

Wegner said he hoped the recently introduced policies would help free up capacities to implement integration measures targeting refugees who have received permission to stay in the country. 

The German capital took in almost 32,000 refugees in 2023, including more than 15,000 from Ukraine.

In 2024, new arrivals dropped to just above 21,000 and 6,089 were registered in the first half of 2025.

Between 2022 and 2025, the costs of housing and supporting refugees in Berlin nearly doubled to €2.24 billion ($2.58 billion).

 

A court in the eastern city of Dresden is to begin its trial of two people suspected of spying for China, with one of the defendants a former assistant to a lawmaker from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The former AfD aide, identified only as Jian G. under German privacy laws, is charged with providing information to Chinese intelligence from 2002, including during a period when he worked for Maximilian Krah, at the time a member of the European Parliament for the far-right populist party.

Prosecutors in Dresden accuse Jian G. of passing on information on debates and decisions at the European Parliament, along with sensitive documents.

It is also possible that information collected by Jian G. includes sensitive details about the workings of the AfD itself, the revelation of which could prove an embarrassment to the party. However, Krah has told news magazine Der Spiegel that he never discussed certain internal problems with the defendant.

The second defendant, named only as Jaqi X., worked at a company that provided Leipzig airport with logistics services. She is accused of helping Jian G. access information on flights and passengers, especially to do with the transport of defense equipment.

Krah himself is under separate investigation on suspicion of money laundering and corruption partly connected with firms linked to Jian G.

He was also at the center of a scandal over remarks that seemed to downplay the seriousness of the crimes committed by the Nazis' notorious SS but nonetheless currently sits as an AfD member of the German lower house, or Bundestag.

DW's newsroom on the Rhine River in Bonn wishes guten Tag to all our users!

Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the largest opposition group in parliament, has has its share of scandals. One of them comes to a head on Tuesday as the espionage trial of a former aide to AfD lawmaker Maximilian Krah gets underway.

The trial could become an embarrassment for the party if information collected on it by the defendant, identified only as Jian G. under German privacy laws, is made public.

And Germany itself has been undergoing a trial of a different nature with a persistent wave of respiratory illnesses such as colds and flus since the start of the year, causing many people to call in sick to work, according to an analysis by health insurance company DAK.

Please explore our blog if you want to find out more about the major talking points in Germany on Tuesday, August 5!