Germany's Ailing Infrastructure: A Nation Slowly Crumbles

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/low-german-infrastructure-investment-worries-experts-a-990903.html



Germany has long had a reputation for excellent infrastructure. But in recent years, both public and private investment has dwindled dramatically, and officials are increasingly concerned about how to solve the problem. They have good reason to be worried.

Germany's Ailing Infrastructure: A Nation Slowly Crumbles
By SPIEGEL Staff
September 18, 2014 – 12:57 PM

Despite its shiny façade, the German economy is crumbling at its core. That, at least, is how Marcel Fratzscher sees it. With the country's infrastructure becoming obsolete and companies preferring to invest abroad, the government advisor argues that German prosperity is faltering.

When Fratzscher, the head of the German Institute for Economic Research, gives a talk these days, he likes to pose a question to his audience: "Which country is this?" He then describes a place that has seen less growth than the average among euro-zone countries since the turn of the millenium, where productivity has only increased slightly and where two out of three employees earn less today than they did in 2000.

Fratzscher usually doesn't have to wait long before people begin raising their hands. "Portugal," one person offers; "Italy," says another; "France," exclaims a third. The economist allows his audience to continue searching for the right answer, until, with a triumphant smile, he announces the answer. The country he is looking for, the one with the weak economic results, is Germany.

Perhaps it takes someone with Fratzscher's background to be so scathingly critical of own country. The Bonn economist worked as a government adviser in Jakarta in the mid-1990s during the Asian financial crisis. He conducted research at the renowned Peterson Institute in Washington when the dot-com bubble burst and wrote analyses for the European Central Bank in the darkest hours of the euro crisis. He has always observed developments in Germany "with a certain amount of distance," he says.