Germany

The top judge at Germany's constitutional court questioned on Wednesday whether the strings attached to any bond purchases by the European Central Bank would be strict enough to protect German taxpayers, The Wall Street Journal reported. On the final day of hearings into the legality of the ECB's main measure for dealing with the euro-zone debt crisis, Andreas Vosskuhle, president of the court, said there were certain promises that can't always be kept.

Brussels is to propose giving itself powers to wind up failing eurozone banks, in an uncompromising banking union plan that pays little heed to Germany’s legal and political concerns. According to a summary of the “single resolution mechanism” proposal seen by the Financial Times, power to shut down banks would be centralised in the European Commission. Brussels would have the clout to overrule the bank’s home country and use funds from a central pot. The blueprint for the resolution authority is due to be published this month.

Germany's job market may be the envy of a struggling Europe, but many Germans say their country's so-called Jobwunder has passed them by, The Wall Street Journal reported. Germany's unemployment rate was unchanged for the seventh straight month at a relatively low 6.9% in May, after seasonal adjustment. Yet nearly one in five working Germans, or about 7.4 million people, hold a "minijob," a form of marginal employment that allows someone to earn up to €450 ($580) a month free of tax.

Germany has agreed to give jobs or apprenticeships to about 5,000 young unemployed Spaniards every year, under a deal signed by labour ministers from both countries in Madrid on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. The deal reflects rising concern in Berlin and other European capitals about a looming social crisis in countries such as Spain, where the rate of youth unemployment now stands at 57 per cent. But it also highlights Germany’s growing need for qualified workers, which is fuelled both by demographic changes and by the recent strong performance of the German economy.

Europe moved closer to favouring big uninsured depositors over bondholders when imposing losses on a failing bank’s creditors, despite UK-led warnings that the special treatment would have a “perverse effect” on bank funding, the Financial Times reported. In a pivotal intervention during an EU finance ministers’ meeting, Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, gave conditional backing for a “depositor preference” compromise, so uninsured deposits are only hit as a last resort.

Commerzbank, Germany's second-biggest lender, said it is considering launching a platform to operate ships in a bid to recover higher values from the vessels that it seizes after shipowners fail to service their loans, Reuters reported. The goal of such a project would be to run the ships together with partners for a limited time, Commerzbank said in the prospectus of its capital increase published on Tuesday. The shipping industry is facing difficult times because of the economic downturn and a glut of new ships, which were ordered during the boom years before 2008.

German companies have joined opposition to the introduction of a tax on financial transactions in Europe, warning of severe damage to businesses in the eurozone’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. Blue-chip companies, including Bayer and Siemens, said they faced tens of millions of euros in costs from the tax and complained of burdens such as lower returns on the pension schemes they run for employees.

IVG Immobilien AG, the German company that plans to restructure 4 billion euros ($5 billion) of debt, said its first-quarter loss widened as the value of its properties fell, Bloomberg reported. The net loss swelled to 45.1 million euros from 4.6 million euros a year earlier, the company said in a statement today. The value of IVG’s properties dropped by 42.5 million euros. IVG, once Germany’s largest commercial property company by market value, has shed about 96 percent of its share price since 2008 following a series of writedowns in its property values and difficulties repaying debt.

For six months Heinrich Traublinger did not manage to fill a vacancy at his bakery near Munich. For about the same length of time, Daniel Henares was looking for work after being laid off from the tyre factory where he worked near Barcelona. Now Mr Henares has begun a new life as a German baker in what amounts to a small step towards solving one of the continent’s most glaring imbalances.

Throughout Europe's debt crisis, northern European leaders have often said they will not stand for taxpayers having to fork out for other countries' problems, and the notion of "taxpayer-funded bailouts" has taken root, Reuters reported in an analysis. Yet despite three-and-a-half years of debt and banking turmoil, with bailouts totalling more than 400 billion euros, northern euro zone taxpayers have not actually lost a cent.