“We need a major effort in this country to get things moving again,” Friedrich Merz, the chancellor candidate for the conservative Christian Democratic Union said over the weekend, as his party announced “Agenda 2030,” which pledges to return German growth to 2 percent over the next five years through changes to the welfare and tax systems.

The German economy, Europe's biggest, shrank for the second consecutive year in 2024, according to preliminary official figures released Wednesday weeks before an election in which the economy is the top issue.

Germany's statistics office says the country's economy shrank by 0.2% in 2024 in second consecutive year of decline

Europe's biggest economy shrank for a second year in a row in 2024, according to data released on Wednesday by the Federal Statistics Office. View on euronews