Germany updates: Welfare payments up by €4 billion last year

The German Interior Ministry called for a cautious approach to allow cities to host particularly vulnerable or traumatized children from Gaza and Israel.

The cities of Düsseldorf and Hanover announced earlier in the week plans to do so, with the German Interior Ministry saying the feasibility of initiatives depends on several factors.

"The feasibility of such initiatives depends significantly on the security situation, the possibility of departure, and other factors," a spokesman told dpa. 

"The main focus is on expanding medical assistance on-site and in nearby regions," he added, saying they were reviewing the situation.

Düsseldorf and Hanover say they are open to receiving most vulnerable children

Hanover announced on Thursday that it would receive up to 20 children, with the possibility of expanding the initiative. Mayor Belit Onay said other cities also expressed similar interest.

Düsseldorf's plans, announced on Friday, are still in development. Officials in the western German city said they would begin examining practical options in the coming week.

Düsseldorf's mayor, Stephan Keller, has expressed support for Hanover's decision and said his city sought to replicate what he called a "strong and deeply humane gesture."

"The feasibility of such initiatives depends significantly on the security situation, the possibility of departure, and other factors," a spokesman told dpa. 

"The main focus is on expanding medical assistance on-site and in nearby regions," he added, saying they were reviewing the situation.

The head of a major German union has said that the "flexibilization" of working hours proposed by the coalition government will be challenged at German and European courts if necessary.

Michael Vassiliadis, the chairman of the IG BCE union, said all possibilities for such flexibilization had been exhausted in industry. 

Vassiliadis also pointed out that where individual labor agreements with workers had been made, any change to legislation on working hours would have no effect, while those workers without such agreements would face "dramatic" consequences.

He said this would lead to further divisions among the workforce overall.

Vassiliadis also noted that longer working days had health consequences.

"We know from studies that the risk of accidents climbs from the eighth hour of work onward. That is not a good idea in plants within the chemical industry, for example," he said, adding that protecting workers' health was another issue.

Germany's conservative-led coalition government plans to set limits for the legal number of hours to be worked in a week rather than in a day, saying this will benefit the work-life balance of workers.

Currently, German labor laws stipulate that an employee may not work longer than eight hours in a day, though exceptions can be made in certain circumstances for 10 hours of work.

Employees are also required to have an uninterrupted break of at least 11 hours between work periods, again with exceptions in hospitals and restaurants, for example, where the interval can be reduced to 10 hours.

Poland will once again extend temporary controls on its frontier to Germany, keeping them in force at least until October 4, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski announced on Sunday.

The Polish national news agency PAP quoted Kierwinski as saying that the European Commission and neighboring EU countries had been notified of the extension.

The controls were put in place on July 7 in response to German border checks imposed in a declared bid to curb irregular migration.

Although the Polish measures were officially due to end on August 5, there had been wide expectations that they would continue.

Since they were introduced, Poland has reported a "98% coverage" of its borders.

Controls on Poland's border to Lithuania are also to remain in place.

EU rules on the Schengen area, to which both Poland and Germany belong, stipulate that countries are allowed to introduce temporary measures as a "last resort" and "in exceptional situations."

German police have described the rescue of a 78-year-old woman stuck with her car on railway tracks as a train approached as being like something out of an "action movie."

The woman's car became caught on tracks in the town of Rothenstein in the eastern state of Thuringia on Saturday evening as barriers at the crossing began to lower due to an incoming train.

Police said a truck driver at the scene managed to use his vehicle to tow the car clear of the tracks just seconds before the train sped past.

The woman was uninjured, though visibly shaken, reports said.

Authorities says she will face charges for having endangered rail traffic.

More than half of adults in Germany say they are going less frequently to restaurants, cinemas and theaters than they once did as a result of inflation-fueled financial stress, a survey has shown.

A total of 17% of the 2,000 respondents in a YouGov survey said their friendships were suffering because they were going out less with friends.  

 Altogether 7% also said such stress had had a negative impact on their sex lives.

However, more than a third (34%) — mainly those aged 55 and older — said inflation fears had no effect on their state of mind.

The negative mental consequences caused byfinancial fears are, however, partly based on false beliefs about inflation that are possibly lingering after Germany experienced its highest inflation rate since reunification almost three years ago amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although food prices and services have indeed gone up year-on-year in 2025 by 2% and 3.3% respectively, energy prices have gone down by 3.5%.

The inflation rate in June was just 2%, 0.2 percentage points down on the same month in 2024.

Germany is not sufficiently prepared to protect its population in cases of conflict or natural disasters, the head of the German Red Cross has told media.

"Much too little is being done for civil protection," Gerda Hasselfelt told newspapers from the Funke media group.

"Unfortunately, it is no delusion that we have to prepare for armed conflicts and that we will also experience weather catastrophes on a large scale," she said. The former health minister also warned that too little thought was given to ways of protecting people at home amid external crises.

Hassenfeldt listed three things to remedy the situation: "provisions including supplies for crises, people who can distribute them in case of emergency and more resilience on the part of the whole population."

She called on the government to invest €2.5 billion ($2.9 billion) annually in civil protection measures, saying that only around half this amount was currently earmarked for this purpose.

Retailers incurred losses of some €3 billion ($3.5 billion) through shoplifting in 2024, a fifth more than in 2022, according to the German Trade Association (HDE), the umbrella body for the German retail sector.

Speaking to the t-online website, HDE managing director Stefan Genth noted a growing problem with highly professional criminal gangs.

"Groups of offenders drive ... through inner cities, steal valuable products — perfume, shoes, electronics — and sell them on the gray market," Genth said.

He said there were also more aggressive individual offenders who attacked shop staff if they were detected.

Genth also said that almost all offenses went unreported.

"Retailers make a complaint to police, only for state prosecutors to drop the case for efficiency reasons. As a consequence, many retailers are frustrated and don't report thefts to the police," he said, adding: "For that reason, the number of unreported cases is extremely high: 98% of shoplifting offenses are not registered."

Genth called for changes to laws, more investment in security and more powers for the judiciary.

He also said that his association had found no connection between the increasing number of self-service checkouts and the rising shoplifting rate so far.

Germany paid out about €46.9 billion ($54.4 billion) to recipients of state welfare benefits in 2024, a rise of €4 billion compared with the previous year, the government as said.

The Social Affairs Ministry provided the information in response to a parliamentary question from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament. 

About €24.7 billion (52.6% of the total) went to German citizens and €22.2 billion (47.4%) went to non-German nationals, according to the data — roughly the same distribution as in 2023.

The latter group included several hundred thousand Ukrainians who have fled to Germany following Russia's full scale invasion that started in 2022. The Ukrainian nationals received €6.3 billion altogether.

The rise in welfare payments has been in part attributed to a large increase in standard rates due to inflation adjustments, as well as to a rise in accommodation and heating costs.

The anti-immigration AfD criticized the payments to non-German nationals, saying they were "spiraling out of control." 

"Foreigners should generally be denied access to citizen's income [Bürgergeld]," said AfD Bundestag member René Springer.

It's worth noting, however, that millions of non-German nationals work in the country, paying into the system via taxes and obligatory social program payments.

Guten Tag from DW's newsroom in the former West German capital of Bonn!

Many Germans are worried that their welfare system will not be able to survive for long in times of global instability. While the country remains Europe's biggest economy, retailers are reporting a surge in shoplifting. 

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