Queen Elizabeth II has received congratulations on her 95th birthday, celebrated on Wednesday, from Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany. Steinmeier wrote on behalf of his German compatriots, expressing his hope that the British sovereign could celebrate this special day with Her…

by Thorsten Koch The CDU chairman and Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet, has thanked Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) for his fairness in negotiating with the newly appointed candidate for Chancellor of the two Union parties. Laschet promised to involve Söder closely…

by Thorsten Koch This Wednesday, the Bundestag voted on the amendment to the Infection Protection Act, passing it after deliberations. The law includes the power to impose restrictions on contacts and closings, for which only the Federal States were previously solely responsible. First of all,…

The Grand Coalition is debating whether to extend insolvency protection for commercial companies in view of the Corona pandemic. So far, the regulation applies until the end of April. The SPD would like a longer period of validity. A spokesman for the Union parties’ parliamentary…

by Thorsten Koch Alena Buyx, Chairwoman of the German Ethics Council, would like to see data protection law revised. You have to adjust data protection in the sense of using big data, she said in an interview with the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Germany”. A change in the…

Annalena Baerbock, the Green Party’s designated candidate for Chancellor, has no preference for a specific coalition after the election campaign leading up to the Federal Elections in September. She wants to lead the next government, said the co-speaker of the Green Party. It is about…

Survey data published on Friday suggest that the Corona measures are supposed to be tightened, to judge from public opinion. 43 percent of those asked in the framework of the representative survey for the ZDF Politbarometer – instead of 33 percent at the end of…

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced in Berlin that an additional 500 soldiers would be stationed in Germany. At a meeting with his German counterpart Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, he named autumn as the time window. Austin wants to see conflicts prevented, for example in cyber…

Germany wants the withdrawal of its soldiers from Afghanistan synchronized with 30 partner states from May 1 to be “orderly, coordinated and deliberate”. The withdrawal should be completed within a few months. In press reports, the time window for the German withdrawal was set from…

In the West African country of Mali, the number of German soldiers participating in the EU training mission EUTM is to be increased from a maximum of 450 to 600 armed forces, the Union faction’s vice-president Johann Wadephul (CDU) announced. Germany will take over the…

Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas has welcomed the efforts of the US government for a peace solution in Yemen. As a result of the efforts, the framework conditions had changed, and there will be new opportunities to end the war. The war could…

The SPD has called for a 2 billion Euro package to be put together for needy children and young people, as part of the help for those affected by the Corona pandemic. The latter are particularly hard hit by the pandemic. The package can be…

The employees of the car manufacturer Volkswagen will receive a Corona bonus of 1000 Euros each in June, as well as a salary increase of 2.3 percent from 2022. IG Metall and Volkswagen agreed on this. The collective agreement for 120,000 employees is valid for…

Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron have welcomed the People’s Republic of China’s goals of achieving CO2 neutrality before 2060. In a digital conference with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi said, according to Chinese state television, that cooperation with Germany and France would…

There were at least 1,606 attacks on refugees and asylum seekers in Germany last year. This results from a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the Left Party in the Bundestag. The figures are preliminary. According to official information,…

In a draft of its election manifesto, the Left Party has shown that it is willing to compromise with regard to the Bundeswehr missions abroad. Instead of a clear ‘No’ to foreign missions, it is now said that the Left “wants” to end such missions….

Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) expects the ‘Lateral Thinkers’ movement to be observed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Violence emanating from the scene had increased, derailments within the movement are repeated, and extremists are becoming spokesmen at the demonstrations,…

Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) assumes that the German economy will recover quickly after the end of the Corona pandemic. The situation is robust, he said, adding that the recovery will accelerate from the middle of the second quarter. Altmaier expects growth of…

The Bundestag has passed a law based on an international agreement, strengthening the rights of indigenous peoples. With the exception of the AfD, all members of the Bundestag parliamentary groups voted for the bill. Convention 169 of the signatories of the International Labor Organization guarantees…

The Federal Cabinet is working to ensure that Germany becomes a “cyclist country,” in the long run. Cycle paths are to be expanded in both urban and rural areas. Metropolises are to be connected by high-speed bike paths. Commuters, for example, could benefit from this….

by Thorsten Koch Possibly, the CDU and CSU parliamentary group will vote in the coming week on whether Armin Laschet (CDU) or Markus Söder (CSU) will run as candidate for German Federal Chancellor for the Union parties, the ‘Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland’ reported. The Hamburg CDU regional…

by Thorsten Koch Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for a faster implementation of the Corona emergency brake, which is to be valid throughout Germany, and warned against overstressing the German health system. In the Bundestag she said: “The situation is serious, very serious.” The third…

by Thorsten Koch The decision as to who will be the CDU-CSU’s candidate for Chancellor could be made this week. This was agreed upon by CSU chairman Markus Söder and CDU chairman Armin Laschet. The two had previously spoken in front of about 250 CDU…

by Thorsten Koch The third wave of the corona pandemic is “perhaps the toughest for us,” Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned. Merkel hopes for tests and vaccinations in order to effectively combat the infections. In particular, vaccination is suitable to break the wave, said Merkel….

A “bridge lockdown” proposed by CDU chairman Armin Laschet could minimize the Corona incidence value to 100 if it was maintained for two to three weeks. This way, easing of limitations in the face of the pandemic would be conceivable. Laschet said during the Morning…