Germany updates: Berlin deports dozens of Iraqi citizens

Germany and the Czech Republic have agreed that there must be a long-term solution for managing the European Union's borders.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala agreed at a meeting in Berlin on Tuesday that checks at their shared 800-kilometer (497-mile) border should be temporary.

"We want a European solution," Merz said. "But as long as we are not able to better protect the external European borders, we must carry out checks at the internal European borders."

While Fiala understood the German approach, he said there needed to be a long-term solution for the EU's external borders, rather than border checks.

Germany's car parts giant Bosch announced a fresh round of job cuts at its southern German site.

Some 1,100 jobs at Bosch's site in the city Reutlingen will be cut by the end of 2029. The company announced that the production of control units there is no longer competitive. 

"The European market for steering systems is driven by price and hard fought with new suppliers," said Bosch's electronics chief Dirk Kress. "The required cuts are not easy but they are essential to secure the future of the site."

About one in ten workers would be affected, but Bosch did not say whether the cuts would involve compulsory redundancies or voluntary measures such as early retirement.

Germany's automotives sector has been struggling in recent years, amid growing competition from China.

German stakeholders have sounded the alarm after the discovery of a major oil and gas deposit in neighboring Poland, amid environmental and tourism concerns.

Central European Petroleum (CEP), a Canadian company, discovered the deposit off the Polish Baltic coast, near Germany's eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In Poland, it was hailed as a "breakthrough moment," whereas in Germany, officials voiced several concerns.

"Our future does not lie in oil from the Baltic Sea, but in energy from the sun, wind and biomass," said Till Backhaus, Environment Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

He said the project was "backward-looking" and "contrary to the interests of the environment and tourism on the German side." 

The oil field is believed to lie some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) away from the port city of Swinoujscie in north-western Poland. The city is partially located on the Island of Usedom which is divided between Germany and Poland.

The island is known for its beaches and natural reserves. German authorities are concerned that nearby oil mining might disrupt tourism and pose an environmental hazard.

"We are a spa and holiday resort. We do everything we can to keep our beaches, our town and the sea clean," said Laura Isabelle Marisken, the mayor of the town of Heringsdorf, a seaside resort in Usedom.

"Heavy industrial gas and oil extraction right on our doorstep, it's obvious that this is a massive intrusion into our natural environment," she added.

Meanwhile, Poland's chief geologist Krzysztof Galos said the field's development might "significantly contribute to strengthening Poland's energy security and reducing its dependence on external hydrocarbon suppliers."

Some 43 Iraqi citizens were deported from Germany on Tuesday, boarding a charter flight bound for Baghdad.

The Ministry of Justice of the eastern state of Thuringia said that all those deported were "single men" who were required to leave the country, adding that some of them "had been convicted of criminal offenses in the past."

The deportation operation involved seven federal states, as well as the federal police, the AFP news agency said.

Passengers were taken to the plane in police vehicles and airport buses, then accompanied individually by police personnel up the stairs into the aircraft, according to the dpa news agency's photographer.

"Our message is clear: anyone who does not have a right of residence must leave our country," said Beate Meißner, Thuringia's Justice Minister and a member of the ruling Christian Democratic Party.

On Friday, Germany deported 81 Afghan nationals back to Afghanistan, the first such flight under Chancellor Friedrich Merz' government.

Germany is facing growing domestic pressure to firm up its stance on Israel in regards to the war in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in the enclave, where more than a dozen residents reportedly starved to death on Tuesday.

Berlin has refrained from joining a joint statement issued by the EU and more than 20 Western countries, including Britain and France, which called for an immediate end to the war.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is facing pressure from within his own ruling coalition.

German Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan, from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the junior coalition member, said she would have liked to see Berlin join the statement.

"What is happening in Gaza right now is unbelievable. Innocent children are dying. People are starving," Radovan said. "What is needed now — not at some point — is an immediate and sustainable ceasefire."

Foreign policy spokesperson Adis Ahmetovic and rapporteur for the Middle East Rolf Mützenich, both senior SPD lawmakers, also called on Germany to join the statement, stressing that "the situation in Gaza is catastrophic and represents a humanitarian abyss."

On Tuesday, Merz said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "very clearly and very explicitly that we do not share the Israeli government’s policy on Gaza," urging for humanitarian aid to reach the civilian population. 

"The way the Israeli army is operating there is not acceptable," Merz said.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has joined forces with the country's top business leaders, who pledge major investment to pull Germany out of recession.

Read the full story on why German companies appear to be more optimistic about the future of the German economy.

Russia has overtaken Germany as one of the top 5 largest beer producers in the world, according to the latest report released by the world's largest hop trader, BarthHaas.

The report's author, Heinrich Meier, stated that beer production in Russia increased by approximately 9% to 9.1 billion liters, while Germany's output dropped by 1%to 8.4 billion liters.

BarthHaas managing director Thomas Raiser attributes Russia's production growth primarily to a decrease in beer imports and a boost in domestic brewing.

China remains the world's largest beer producer, with the United States is second place.

Germany has experienced a long-term decline in beer consumption due to its aging population, growing competition from a variety of other beverages, and reduced purchasing power during tough economic times.

Germany's Federal Statistical Office, Destatis, has set up a special website providing statistics that give averages on a number of parameters describing the country's 83.6 million residents.

Here are some of them:

At the end of 2024, the average person living in Germany was 44.9 years of age. Because women have a longer life expectancy, that goes up to 46.2 for females as compared with 43.5 for males.

The average person was 1.73 meters (5 foot 8.1 inches) in height and weighed 77.7 kilograms (171.3 lbs). Women: 1.66 m, 69.2 kilograms; men 1.79 meters, 85.8 kilograms.

Other statistics: The average resident lives in a household with one other person.  A woman gives birth to 1.6 children on average in the course of her life, while the average family has 3.4 members.

The average German full-time salary is €4,634 ($5,422) monthly before tax. But here, the gender pay gap is very noticeable, with women earning €4,214 per month as compared with €4,830 for men.

The statisticians also noted that the average woman in Germany has her first child at the age of 30.4, while the average man becomes a father for the first time at the age of 33.3. 

The average age for first-time marriage is higher, at 32.9 for women and 35.3 for men. 

And the average person retires at the age of 64.7, with women drawing a pension for 23.2 years compared with 20.2 years for men.  

A German Air Force flight made an emergency landing in Leipzig on Monday night after a warning message went off in the cockpit, a spokesperson said.

Speaking with the German press agency DPA, the Airbus A319 was on its way back from Berlin to its base in Cologne. 

Earlier, the plane had been carrying Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, who had been on her first official visit to Poland. She had disembarked in Berlin. 

The spokesperson said that the plane would be inspected today, after which a decision will be made if the aircraft needs repairs. 

German military equipment has long been the butt of international jokes for being run-down and out of date. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel famously had to break off a journey to a G20 summit when her plane experienced technical issues.

The German media group Südwestdeutsche Medienholding (SWMH), which owns daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, among other publications, has been the target of a "critical IT security incident," it said on Tuesday.

The group said its internal network was briefly accessed by unauthorized individuals in mid-July, affecting all the companies connected by it, including the Stuttgarter Zeitung and Stuttgarter Nachrichten dailies.

It said the attack had been stopped and that all online reporting and newspaper production had continued without disruption.

The attack has been reported to the police cybercrime unit and the incident is being investigated by external IT security experts, it said.

SWMH is one of Germany's largest newspaper publishers and employs some 4,500 people.

Germany's Constitutional Court has upheld a three-year jail sentence handed to a former doctor convicted of assisting in the suicide of a mentally ill patient.

The man had filed a complaint with the court claiming that his basic rights had been violated by his punishment.

The court said the man had failed to prove sufficiently that this was the case.

The former doctor was sentenced in 2024 by a regional court in Essen for having assisted the patient to commit suicide in 2020, although the latter suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and was considered by the court to be incapable of taking a free decision to take his life.

Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Germany under some circumstances, but the patient has to be determined to be mentally sound enough to make the decision.

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European countries have massively increased their defense spending amid fears of further Russian territorial aggression.

Several startups in Germany are seeking to exploit the trend but face many challenges.

DW has this video analysis:

The German Association of General Practitioners (Hausärztinnen- und Hausärzteverband) has warned that a newly introduced system aimed at allowing health care providers to more easily exchange patient data is in danger of "crash landing."

"The number of active users is sobering," association chairman Markus Beier told the daily Rheinische Post. "If those in charge keep on as they have been, one of the most important care projects of the past years will fail slowly but surely."

He said this would be bad news for patients, as "a well-implemented electronic patient file indubitably would have the potential to tangibly improve and simplify care."

He called on health insurance companies to conduct a "big and coordinated information campaign" for their customers.

Beier, however, also criticized the system itself as being over-complicated to use, saying that barely a week went by in which doctors' practices didn't have problems accessing patient files.

Electronic patient fileswere rolled out nationwide in April of this year. The files contain the entire medical history of a patient, with aim of facilitating treatment coordination between physicians and other health care providers.

Internet security experts say there have been dozens of hacking attacks on self-hosted servers using Microsoft's SharePoint software, affecting several organizations, including government bodies, mostly in Germany and the US.

The SharePoint servers are widely used by organizations, including government bodies, major industrial firms, banks, auditors and health care companies, for the internal sharing of documents and to facilitate collaboration.

Security researchers warn that the hacking operation, reportedly known as "ToolShell," is a serious one and can allow actors to fully access SharePoint file systems, including services connected to SharePoint, such as Teams and OneDrive.

The hack allows the perpetrators to potentially drop a so-called backdoor to give them continuous access to victim organizations.

Microsoft said it had "provided security updates and encourages customers to install them," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

It said the vulnerability affects only on-site SharePoint servers used within businesses or organizations and not Microsoft's cloud-based SharePoint Online service.

Eye Security, a Netherlands-based cybersecurity firm that helped uncover the operation, has declined to identify the affected organizations, but said the relevant national authorities had been notified.

Interior ministers from the 27 EU member states are set to meet in the Danish capital,Copenhagen, for talks focusing on migration and European security.

Discussions are to center on how best to repatriate people who have had their asylum requests refused and how to combat irregular migration.

The fight against organized crime and the drug trade will also be on the agenda.

Proposals on the table include the possibility of setting up so-called repatriation centers outside the EU.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is expected to be among the attendees.

Dobrindt has already implemented controversial pushback measures at Germany's borders that a court has ruled to be illegal.

Last Friday, the conservative politician from Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU) also pushed for much harsher European migration policies in talks with counterparts from Austria, France, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic during a summit hosted in Germany.

This included proposals to be more rigorous in sending people back to home countries whose security situation is fragile, such as Syria and Afghanistan.