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OPINION AND ANALYSIS

‘Don’t mention the war’: Are the days of England-Germany jingoism behind us?

As many British migrants in Germany know, the "old rivalry" isn't exactly what it seems - and it's often a tale of two perspectives, writes Imogen Goodman.

Published: 29 June 2021 16:04 CEST
'Don't mention the war': Are the days of England-Germany jingoism behind us?
England manager Gareth Southgate playing in the now-legendary Euro '96 game that saw England knocked out of the tournament by Germany. Photo: picture alliance / dpa | Bernd Weissbrod

When Germany scored their late equaliser in their nail-biting final group game against Hungary on June 23rd, my dad was unusually quick off the mark.

“Next stop, Wembley,” he wrote to me on WhatsApp. “The question is: who are you going to support?”

As someone who has had to consider relinquishing my British passport in favour of a German one due to Brexit, “which side are you on?” questions are not ones I relish – though I have to admit I’ve played the same game myself. 

I moved to Germany from England in September 2016, and given how the dates match up, I often find myself talking about the move as a tiny piece of post-Brexit rebellion, a vote by plane ticket.

If Britain is leaving the EU, I tried to imply to anyone who’d listen, I’m on the side of Europe. 

In reality, my decision probably had a lot more with where I wanted to be at the time: my love of Berlin, and the quality of life I felt the city could offer me. And if I’m being really honest, I made the decision way ahead of the June 23rd vote on Brexit. 

In reality, I love the UK, and I love Germany. Both things remain true.

And unlike the knock-out stage of a football tournament, identity is not a zero-sum game. 

A tale of two commentaries

The internal battle of a fair-weather football fan is not, of course, a particularly big deal.

But the fact remains that, as a migrant in a foreign country, you see the commentary from both angles – and it can sometimes feel like two parallel universes. 

READ ALSO: ‘Irresponsible’: Germany urges UK government to reduce Euro 2020 crowd sizes

As the Germans celebrated narrowly clearing the group stages, I braced myself for the onslaught of Faulty Towers references – “Don’t mention the war!” – and evidence of triumphant ‘thrashings’ that England had doled out to ‘the Boche’, dug straight out of the dustbin of sports-trivia history. 

Writing in The Guardian a few days ago, Anglo-German sports journalist Barney Ronay pointed out that, while the English media’s response to a play-off against Germany is often reminiscent of the Daily Mirror’s infamous “Achtung! Surrender!” headline at Euro ’96, the German response to these games is generally quite positive.

Anecdotally, the people I’ve met at screenings of the Euros around Berlin have supported this view – though the Germans I’ve talked to aren’t quite so positive about their performance in the tournament so far.

Sitting outside a pub in the district of Lübars over the weekend, one man lamented Germany’s chances against England on Tuesday.

“We didn’t even properly qualify for this tournament,” he told me, adding that he’d be pleased to see England go all the way. 

“I’d like to see a small team win it,” he said. “They haven’t won anything for ages.” 

Writing about the upcoming match, Philip Oltermann, The Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief, made a similar point to Ronay about the obsession of the British press with the so-called “old rivalry”. 

READ ALSO: Remembering the time Brits turned sleepy spa town Baden-Baden into Germany’s party capital

“Germany’s real grudge matches are against teams that have inflicted painful defeats, like Italy or the Netherlands,” he wrote.

“Matches against England, by contrast, tend to produce happy memories: England have won only six out of 24 matches against West and reunified German teams since 1966.”

In response to the age-old English football chant of “Two World Wars and One World Cup,” Oltermann has an idea for a stinging German counter-attack: “Four World Cups and three European Championships”. And it’s probably a fair retort. 

A more respectful tone? 

While it doesn’t seem like the Faulty Towers and 1966 World Cup references will ever be avoided in a fixture like this, it seems like international football tournaments are increasingly taking on a different dimension.

Like many other people in our globalised world, German midfielder Jamal Musiala – who could play this evening – is the holder of two passports: a British and a German one. 


Midfielder Jamal Musiala, who holds a both a British and a German passport, training ahead of the England-Germany game. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Christian Charisius

While he was born in Stuttgart and plays for the national German team, he’s also had stints as a youth player for England. 

The thing is, Musiala’s international background and ‘Auslandserfahrung’ (experience of living abroad) isn’t particularly exceptional anymore.

Like many expats in Europe, footballers these days have experience of living a split existence: they play for clubs in different leagues and countries around the world, before jetting back home to fight for the home team when the international tournaments kick off.

In a sign of the changing times, the paper which ran the notorious Euro ’96 headline – The Daily Mirror – decided to not to mention Fritz this time around, opting instead for the much friendlier-sounding ‘Hans’. 

In a small column about Anglo-German couples, they predicted that, despite the footballing rivalry, most of them would still be able to “shake Hans” afterwards. 

Slowly but surely, the migrants and international families around the world are transforming ‘us’ and ‘them’ into a slightly more complicated ‘us’ and ‘us’ – and some, if not all, of the football coverage might be starting to reflect that. 

Given what we’ve seen in the tournament so far from both teams, I wouldn’t be brave enough to place a bet on the outcome of the England-Germany game tonight, but I do have one prediction (or ‘Tipp’, as the Germans would say). 

While jingoism may not crash out of the Euros with a bang tonight, it could slowly but slowly be petering out of the England-Germany discourse. Though we’re not quite there yet.

Having left my dad hanging on the “who will you support” question, I finally think of a response that feels right. 

“Whoever wins,” I tell him. Which feels like a win-win scenario. 

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ECONOMY

Schuldenbremse: What is Germany’s debt brake and how does it affect residents?

Nothing sums up Germany's cautious relationship with money quite as well as the debt brake - but this little clause in the constitution has recently caused no end of chaos. Here's what you need to know about the so-called 'Schuldenbremse'.

Published: 27 November 2023 17:37 CET
Updated: 2 December 2023 08:23 CET
Schuldenbremse: What is Germany's debt brake and how does it affect residents?

What is the debt brake and why did Germany introduce it?

Known as the Schuldenbremse in German, the debt brake is a cap on government borrowing that’s enshrined in Germany’s constitution. It states that the federal government can only take on a certain amount of new debt in each fiscal year.

This is capped at 0.35 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the amount of money the country produces each year in goods and services. Though GDP varies from year to year, this generally gives the government enough wiggle room to borrow around €9 billion annually.

When it comes to spending on a regional level – i.e. by state governments in Germany – the rules are even stricter. States aren’t allowed to borrow any money to fund their plans and must therefore create balanced budgets that finance spending exclusively through tax income and money from the central government.

But why exactly has Germany decided to tie itself to such strict rules on spending? Well, there are quite a few answers to that. 

Back in 2009, the Grand Coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD), led by Angela Merkel, decided to bring the debt brake into law. At the time, the global economy was struggling to deal with the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis, and Germany was racking up a huge deficit. 

The idea was to bring borrowing back under control as soon as possible and prevent leaving billions of euros in debt for future generations to pay off. It also paid homage to the main edicts of neo-liberalism, creating a streamlined state with little room for generous investments or high social welfare payments. 

Thanks to the ongoing effects of the financial crisis, the debt break only came into force seven years after it was put in the constitution. This means that since 2016, the federal governments have been tied to 0.35 percent cap on borrowing.

That said, there are a few exceptions to the Schuldenbremse: in periods of national emergency, such as natural disasters or pandemics, the government is allowed to put the debt brake to one side. That’s exactly what happened during the Covid pandemic in the years 2020 to 2022, and now it appears it will be put aside for the fourth year in a row. In other words, it has been sidelined for exactly half of the time it has been in place.

READ ALSO: Germany to seek debt rule suspension for 2023

Why has the debt brake been in the news recently?

The debt brake was put in the spotlight in early November when Germany’s Constitutional Court declared tens of billions of earmarked government spending to be ‘unconstitutional’.

The case related to €60 billion of borrowing that was originally intended for tackling the Covid crisis but had later been diverted towards a fund for fighting climate change known as the Climate and Transformation Fund.

In normal cases, moving unspent money around wouldn’t be a problem – but in this case, the specific rules around the debt brake came into play. Utilising the exceptions in the debt brake, the €60 billion was borrowed for the purpose of stabilising the economy during the pandemic – and as such it was only supposed to go towards tackling that emergency.

Wind turbines in Germany

Wind turbines in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Christian Charisius

Beyond this amount, which already represents a huge chunk of the national budget, the court decision also invalidated the Economic Stabilisation Fund (WSF). This fund was also originally set up during the Covid crisis and later repurposed as Olaf Scholz’s ‘Doppelwumms’: a €200 billion pot that paid for the energy price breaks and other relief measures in the wake of the Ukraine war. 

READ ALSO:

Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) announced that the debt brake would be set aside for one more year to allow the government to meet its financial commitments for 2023. However, the budget for next year – and how the significant gaps in funding will be filled – still remain unclear.

The crisis has sparked a major debate among politicians about whether the debt brake is still fit for purpose. 

What do critics of the debt brake say? 

As you might expect, the tight controls on spending aren’t popular with everyone – especially those on the left on the political spectrum. 

Proponents of the debt brake say we should lower the deficit to avoid lumbering future generations with unmanageable debts, but critics of the mechanism make the opposite argument. They say that straightjacketing spending will actually put a strain on future generations as the government will be unable to invest in modern infrastructure and could therefore be hindering growth.

If borrowing is slashed too much and tax revenues don’t increase, projects like the green transformation, upgrading public transport and pushing ahead with digitalisation will inevitably be put on the backburner. The government will be forced to prioritise its urgent day to day spending in the present rather than trying to invest in the future – and it could also be forced to cut vital public services.

Deutsche Bahn train

Deutsche Bahn staff give the sign for an ICE high speed train to leave the main railway station in Stuttgart, southern Germany, on August 11, 2021. Photo by THOMAS KIENZLE / AFP

Other critics argue that the debt brake was appropriate at the time when it was introduced but that times have changed and governments require more flexibility. 

In the early to mid-2000s, Germany was riding high on a booming manufacturing and exports sector fuelled by cheap Russian gas, and had made little attempt to invest in renewable energy. Now, however, with Germany transitioning away from cheap Russian gas while trying to slash the country’s carbon emissions, Germany is faced with numerous expensive challenges at a time when the economy is especially weak – meaning borrowing more or raising more taxes feel like an inevitability. 

READ ALSO: ‘2024 a turning point’: When will Germany’s rail network run on time?

Could the debt brake be reformed in the future?

That’s certainly an idea that’s come from multiple camps – not least Economics Minister Robert Habeck of the Green Party. Speaking at the recent Green Party Conference, Habeck slammed the current rules on borrowing, stating: “With the debt brake as it is, we have voluntarily tied our hands behind our backs and are going into a boxing match.”

According to Habeck, the debt brake should be reformed according to the “green golden rule” to allow borrowing for investments rather than everyday spending. This is an idea that has also been put forward by economists.

Saskia Esken, the co-leader of the SPD, has also spoken out in favour of a reform of the debt brake to avoid putting a drag on growth in the future. 

However, the likelihood of this happening seems low at the moment, even if Greens and SPD politicians – and some members of the CDU – are in favour of it. 

That’s because it takes a two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to change any aspect of the Grundgesetz, or constitution – a much higher bar than the simple majority needed to change a law.

The FDP, who are in the coalition alongside the Greens and SPD, are also fiercely opposed to any reform of the debt brake and want to rein in government spending instead. 

Christian Lindner

German Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) speaks in the Bundestag. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Michael Kappeler

Messing with this fiscal rule could also prove unpopular: a recent poll found that 61 percent on Germans were opposed to any reform of the debt brake, as opposed to 35 percent who were in favour of it, and 4 percent who didn’t know. 

It means that in the medium term at least, the government may have to take a scalpel to its previous spending plans, cutting spending on investment projects, public services like healthcare and transport and social welfare such as child and unemployment benefits. Or it may find a way to raise some taxes without upsetting the FDP. 

READ ALSO: How Germany’s budget crisis could affect you

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