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ECONOMY

Majority of Germans ‘very afraid’ of post-Covid tax hikes

The high national debt in the coronavirus pandemic - and its impact on people's bank balances - has become the number one concern for Germans in 2021.

Someone checks the money in their wallet
Germans have a cultural attitude towards debt that's evident in all facets of German life - from politics to buying homes. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Fernando Gutierrez-Juarez

That’s according to a recent study titled ‘Fears of the Germans’, which was published on Thursday and conducted on behalf of insurance firm R+V.

In it, 53 percent of 2,400 respondents named fear of higher taxes or benefit cuts because of Covid as one of their main concerns.

A fear of rising inflation took second place, with 50 percent saying they were afraid of an increase in their living costs. Just as many mentioned the cost of EU debt, which took third place in the survey.

Over the course of the Covid crisis, public debt grew by 14.4 percent – or €273.8 billion – to a record level in 2020, according to the Federal Statistical Office. As a result of the measures introduced to combat Covid, inflation also soared to 3.9 percent in August, the highest level in many years.

READ ALSO: German consumer prices rise by highest level in three decades on back of pandemic measures

This means that Germans are facing an increase in the price of everyday necessities – and lots of people are dealing with a loss of earnings due to the pandemic. 

Last year former US President Donald Trump took the top spot for the second year running as the greatest source of German angst in the insurance firm’s ranking. 

Refugees trump climate change as key concern

In the annual survey, participants are asked to rate given topics on a scale from one (no fear at all) to seven (very great fear).

Alongside economic issues, the fear that the state could be overburdened by refugees came in fourth place as 45 percent of respondents named this as a concern.

READ ALSO: Germany takes in close to 50,000 refugees in first half of 2021

Meanwhile, 43 percent are worried about harmful substances in food, and the same number are worried about care in old age. Seventh place is taken by concerns about “tensions caused by the influx of foreigners,” which was mentioned by 42 percent of respondents.

The election campaign’s top issue – climate change – only came in eighth place in the annual survey, with 41 percent of respondents saying they were very afraid of more frequent natural disasters and extreme weather events. However, according to R+V, the survey took place before the flood disaster in western Germany.


Climate activists from Greenpeace protest outside Germany’s annual IAA motor show in Munich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Sven Hoppe

In order to get a more updated picture of this, another 1,000 people were surveyed online at the end of July – and interviewers noted a drastic change. 

READ ALSO: Climate change made German floods ‘more likely and more intense’

In the supplementary survey, 69 percent expressed fear of natural disasters and extreme weather, while 61 percent were concerned that climate change would have dramatic consequences for mankind. These are record figures in its 30 years of surveys, R+V explained.

According to the insurance firm, around 2,400 representatively selected people aged 14 and over were surveyed from May 25th to July 4th on their views – with the exception of the additional survey in late July to determine views on climate change after the flood.

Vocabulary 

Tax increases/hikes – (die) Steuererhöhungen

Living costs – (die) Lebenshaltungskosten

National/public debt – die (Staatsverschuldung)

The top issue of the election campaign – Das Wahlkampf-Topthema

We’re aiming to help our readers improve their German by translating vocabulary from some of our news stories. Did you find this article useful? Let us know.

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‘Città 30’: Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna has faced heavy criticism - including from the Italian government - after introducing a speed limit of 30km/h, but it's not the only city to approve these rules.

'Città 30': Which Italian cities will bring in new speed limits?

Bologna on January 17th became Italy’s first major city to introduce a speed limit of 30km/h on 70 percent of roads in the city centre under its ‘Città 30’ plan, first announced in 2022, and initially set to come into force by June 2023.

The move made Bologna one of a growing number of European cities, including Paris, Madrid, Brussels, and Bilbao, to bring in a 30km/h limit aimed at improving air quality and road safety.

But the change was met last week with a go-slow protest by Bologna’s taxi drivers and, perhaps more surprisingly, criticism from the Italian transport ministry, which financed the measure.

Matteo Salvini, who is currently serving as Italy’s transport minister, this week pledged to bring in new nationwide rules dictating speed limits in cities that would reverse Bologna’s new rule.

Salvini’s League party has long criticised Bologna’s ‘Città 30’ plan, claiming it would make life harder for residents as well as people working in the city and would create “more traffic and fines”.

OPINION: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

Bologna’s speed limit has sparked a heated debate across Italy, despite the increasingly widespread adoption of such measures in many other cities in Europe and worldwide in recent years.

While Bologna is the biggest Italian city to bring in the measure, it’s not the first – and many more local authorities, including in Rome, are now looking to follow their example in the next few years.

Some 60 smaller cities and towns in Italy have adopted the measure so far, according to Sky TG24, though there is no complete list.

This compares to around 200 French towns and cities to adopt the rule, while in Spain the same limit has applied to 70 percent of all the country’s roads since since May 2021 under nationwide rules, reports LA7.

The first Italian town to experiment with a 30 km/h speed limit was Cesena, south of Bologna, which introduced it in 1998. Since then, the local authority has found that serious accidents have halved, while the number of non-serious ones has remained unchanged.

Olbia, in Sardinia, also famously introduced the speed limit in 2021.

The city of Parma is planning to bring in the same rules from 2024, while the Tuscan capital of Florence approved five 30km/h zones in the city centre earlier this month.

Turin is set to bring in its first 30km/h limits this year as part of its broader plan to improve transport infrastructure, aimed at reducing smog and increasing livability.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, has promised to introduce the limit on 70 percent of the capital’s roads by the end of his mandate, which expires in 2026.

In Milan, while the city council has voted in favour of lower speed limits and other traffic limitations on central roads, it’s not clear when these could come into force.

Milan mayor Beppe Sala this week said a 30 km/h limit would be “impossible” to implement in the Lombardy capital.

And it’s notable that almost all of the cities looking at slowing down traffic are in the north or centre-north of Italy.

There has been little interest reported in the measures further south, where statistics have shown there are a higher number of serious road accidents – though the total number of accidents is in fact higher in the north.

According to the World Health Organisation the risk of death to a pedestrian hit by a car driven at 50 km/h is 80 percent. The risk drops to 10 percent at 30 km/h.

The speed limit on roads in Italian towns and cities is generally 50, and on the autostrade (motorways) it’s up to 130.

Many Italian residents are heavily dependent on cars as their primary mode of transport: Italy has the second-highest rate of car ownership in Europe, with 670 vehicles per 1,000 residents, second only to Luxembourg with 682, according to statistics agency Eurostat.

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