Bastasin, Carlo, (2013), “Germany: A Global Miracle and a European Challenge”, Brookings Institute, Μάιος.
In 1994, five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Germans feared that the unification of the two Germanys had failed. In 1997 the term “Reformstau” (the reform deadlock) had been elected as the “word of the year”. In 1999 and 2000 the weekly magazine The Economist called Germany “the sick man of Europe”. In 2003 the German economy was back in recession. Until 2004, Germany was struggling in a spiral of a seemingly unstoppable decline, without precedent for its length. Since 2004, Germany has emerged from its economic sluggishness with a performance that, considering the preceding fifteen years, appears to be exceptional. Today, people commonly interpret the rebirth of the German economy as a new Wirtschaftswunder, an economic miracle comparable to that of the postwar period and able to provide such a political prestige and diplomatic assertiveness to determine the fate of the political and institutional framework of the rest of Europe.