Whether or not you agree with the currently much-debated idea that Germany is the new "sick man of Europe," according to the expression popularized by The Economist in 1999 and taken up again in mid-August by the British magazine, you have to agree German production has reached the end of a cycle.

The culprits behind this relative decline were neither the Covid-19 pandemic nor the war in Ukraine, which were merely the indicators: By 2018, the German economy was already showing signs of a loss of competitiveness, perfectly identified by economists at the time. In addition to aging infrastructure and a loss of administrative efficiency due to insufficient investment, the composition of industry itself was beginning to turn gray. Cheap Russian fossil gas perpetuated a structure marked by old, energy-intensive specialties such as chemicals, iron and steel, glass and ceramics.

Blinded by the export success of their machines and combustion-powered sedans, the Germans largely missed out on the fundamental breakthroughs of the 2010s: the mobile internet, the digitization of the economy, the electrification of equipment and the slowdown in globalization. The world's best-selling vehicle today is not Volkswagen's Golf, it is Tesla's Model Y, which is first and foremost a battery-powered computer on wheels, an extension of the smartphone. The heart of the vehicle is not the engine but the program, which constantly analyzes and compiles road data, battery data and the driver's individual preferences.

China and the United States now want to replace their imports with domestically produced goods. Individual data, long disdained by Germany, is the new fuel for industry, thanks to artificial intelligence. China's command economy has fully appropriated some of the specialties in which German companies were once world leaders, such as solar panels and wind turbines. Across the Rhine, expensive energy and an aging population have become serious handicaps.

Should we bury the "made in Germany" brand? That would be forgetting that the German economy has recovered from several crises in the past, thanks to traditional strengths. One of them is the stability of the middle class, which has not yet lost its ability to compromise. It is due in no small part to its astonishing network of associations known as "Vereine," which links society at every level. The practice of social dialogue still guarantees a great capacity to adapt to civil society and companies. It was particularly evident during the major waves of refugee arrivals in 2015 and 2022, although the rise of the far right is a threat to be taken very seriously.

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