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The Costs of Unification

DW staff / AFP (win)November 22, 2006

Comments by a top EU official that Germany has overcome the economic burden of unification sparked consternation Wednesday in eastern German states where unemployment is still much higher than in the western ones.

https://p.dw.com/p/9QCo
Eastern cities, like Dresden, might sparkle again, but many say they still need helpImage: AP

The EU Commission's director-general for economic and financial affairs, Klaus Regling, said on Tuesday in an interview that Germany, the biggest euro zone economy, had finally overcome the burden of unification and could now look forward to stronger growth.

"The after-effects of reunification have now been largely overcome," Regling told the Financial Times Deutschland. "That will have a lasting positive effect on German growth.

"German competitiveness is now back where it was before 1989," he said, referring to the year the Berlin Wall fell.

Distorted view?

Feuerwerk Brandenburger Tor
The fireworks fizzled shortly after reunification as unemployment rose in the eastImage: AP

But Regling's comments were not well received in eastern Germany, which in economic and infrastructural terms still lags behind the richer western part of the country.

"Unfortunately, the rebuilding of the east is not yet self-sustaining," Georg Mildbradt, the premier of the eastern state of Saxony, told the Berliner Zeitung. "There can be no talk of a self-sustaining economy in the east. We will still need initiatives to strengthen economic developments in eastern Germany in the future."

Reiner Haseloff, the economics minister of the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, agreed, adding that the EU's diagnosis was "totally distorted."

"It may appear like that from Brussels," he said. "But the reality is very different."

Haseloff's colleague from the eastern state of Thuringia, Jürgen Reinholz, said the former communist part of the country still needed financial help even if Germany's economy as a whole had largely recovered from the costs of unification, according to the EU.