Some of Germany’s biggest industrial bosses are reigniting the debate over longer working hours.

Nearly 40 years ago, German metalworkers secured a 35-hour working week by winning one of the most contentious disputes in the country’s post-war history.

According to a report in the Financial Times (FT), prominent companies, including Mercedes-Benz and toolmaker Stihl, have demanded that employees work 40 hours a week without additional pay, arguing that high labour costs are undermining the country’s competitiveness.

Speaking to the Handelsblatt newspaper earlier this summer, Martin Brudermuller, chairman of the supervisory board of Mercedes-Benz Group, said, “By international standards, labour here has become too expensive,” arguing that the country had lost its “productivity advantage over key competitors.”

“We must seriously consider returning to a 40-hour working week,” Brudermuller said.

Labour costs in Germany are among the highest in the EU. Hourly labour costs in the manufacturing sector stand at 49.50 euros, which is 47% above the EU average of 33.70 euros and triple the cost of 15.60 euros in Hungary.

Although German employees are more productive than their Eastern European counterparts, unit labour costs, which measure worker productivity, have risen significantly faster since 2023 compared with previous years, according to a study by the IMK, a think-tank funded by German trade unions.

The calls to return to a 40-hour week have come ahead of industrial unions starting their latest wage negotiations in October.

The 35-hour working week was phased in over more than a decade following a dispute in 1984.

In that dispute, tens of thousands of metalworkers in former West Germany staged a seven-week strike to secure shorter working hours.

Today, the 35-hour working week is the collectively agreed standard for approximately one-fifth of German employees, concentrated in sectors such as automotive, engineering, iron, and steel. Across all sectors, the average weekly working time is 37.8 hours.

Germans work fewer average annual hours than employees in almost all other OECD economies. However, this comparison is heavily skewed by the country’s high rate of part-time employment.

What has turned a decades-long debate into an urgent issue of competitiveness is the deepening crisis in the German manufacturing sector.

Having peaked in late 2017, German industrial production has fallen by more than 15% as manufacturers have been hit by back-to-back energy price shocks stemming from anti-Russia sanctions, intensifying competition from China, US tariffs, and the profound shift towards electric vehicles.

According to Marcus Berret, global managing director of the consultancy Roland Berger, high labour costs were once offset by Germany’s other attractive features for employers, such as political stability, strong infrastructure, a skilled workforce, and dense industrial clusters.

However, these advantages have begun to erode as the cost gap with countries in Eastern Europe and beyond has widened:

“When it comes to labour costs, we are not talking about a 10% or 20% gap [with rival economies]. In some cases, we are talking about a three- or fourfold difference.”

So far, manufacturing employment in Germany has declined at a much slower pace; despite the sharp drop in output, approximately 6.5 million people continue to work in the sector.

However, Berret predicts further job losses:

“If I piece together the information I have from individual companies, I estimate that the number of people employed in manufacturing will drop to below 5 million.”

Currently, around 12,000 to 15,000 manufacturing jobs are being lost each month, and major employers such as Volkswagen have already indicated that many more positions in Germany will need to be eliminated.

Economists argue that longer working hours may become inevitable for employees who manage to keep their jobs.

Martin Werding, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, says that the mechanisms manufacturers once used to compensate for high labour costs, such as relying on temporary agency workers who could be laid off during periods of weak demand, are no longer sufficient.

“Today’s challenges have grown so large that this flexibility is no longer enough,” Werding said.

A shift from 35 to 40 hours without additional pay would increase working time by 14% without changing weekly wage costs. Werding added that the debate over working hours is “far beyond symbolic politics.”

With more than 2.2 million members, IG Metall, Germany’s largest and most powerful trade union, rejects the claim that factories are bound by a rigid 35-hour working week constraint.

Nadine Boguslawski, head of collective bargaining at IG Metall and a member of the Mercedes supervisory board, stated that agreements with employers already provide companies with significant flexibility to increase or reduce working hours.

“A rigid 35-hour working week, as is sometimes portrayed, simply does not exist in the companies I know,” Boguslawski said.

She added that IG Metall remains open to finding tailored solutions for struggling companies.

At the heart of the debate lies a fundamental disagreement between unions and employers over whether longer working hours destroy jobs by distributing a fixed amount of work among fewer people, or protect jobs by making German factories more competitive.

Boguslawski argued that one of the main reasons IG Metall fought hard for the 35-hour working week in the 1980s was to “bring more people into employment” by sharing available work among more people:

“If you reverse this and increase weekly working hours to 40, you generally need fewer workers, regardless of whether those additional hours are paid or unpaid.”

However, economists such as Werding argue that the volume of available work is not guaranteed and depends on the competitiveness of firms.

They suggest that if lower labour costs per unit of output make German factories more competitive, companies can retain production and jobs that would otherwise move abroad or disappear.

It remains unclear whether the push for longer working hours will make it onto the negotiating agenda between unions and employers this autumn.

Gesamtmetall, the metal industry employers’ association, declined to comment on calls to abandon the 35-hour working week, citing “internal deliberations.”

Berret worries that the political and public debate has not yet caught up with the scale of the crisis facing German industry.

“Many people are living in a different reality regarding what lies ahead of us,” Berret said.

Eight European Union member states, including Germany and France, want to reorganise the bloc’s foreign policy decision-making process.

The member states circulated the proposal, obtained by Bloomberg, ahead of informal meetings of EU defence and foreign ministers taking place in Ireland this week.

Many foreign policy decisions require unanimity, a requirement that has caused specific initiatives to remain blocked for years.

Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban regularly used this veto power to block sanctions against Russia or halt support provided to Ukraine.

The document acknowledges a “radically altered environment shaped by strategic competition, growing instability, and attempts to undermine the rules-based international order”, and notes that the EU must “mobilise its collective political, economic, and diplomatic weight swiftly and effectively”.

Although the countries support “consensus as far as possible”, they are seeking solutions to accelerate the decision-making process and prevent bottlenecks without the need to rewrite the treaties, a step that would itself require unanimity.

The document proposes principles such as “sincere cooperation, avoiding linking unrelated policy debates, and constructive abstention” to ensure that member states can oppose a decision without vetoing it.

A group of countries made a similar attempt last year, but the effort is being brought back onto the agenda in the context of a broader debate on transforming the EU’s diplomatic service.

A proposal backed by Germany aims to integrate this service into the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in order to centralise foreign policy activities.

Under the Franco-German plan, Kaja Kallas would assume a more active role and hold broader responsibilities within the European Commission. However, Ursula von der Leyen would retain the final say on foreign policy.

Under the complex architecture of the Lisbon Treaty, the High Representative leads the European External Action Service (EEAS) and designs, coordinates, and implements foreign policy on behalf of the 27 member states.

The High Representative also serves as one of the vice-presidents of the European Commission.

However, heavy portfolios that shape the course of international policy, such as trade, energy, climate, and migration, fall largely under the Commission’s remit, leaving the EEAS without tangible leverage to bring to the table.

Enlargement, another area with a distinct geopolitical dimension, rests entirely within the hands of the Commission.

This division of competences has allowed Ursula von der Leyen to expand her foreign policy role significantly.

She has also pursued an intensive travel schedule to sign various high-profile agreements.

Von der Leyen’s expanding influence has caused surprise in capitals and generated occasional criticism alleging “overreach” and a “power grab”, despite her being frequently encouraged by EU leaders to take the lead in global crises.

The Franco-German plan envisages giving Kallas an active role in coordinating external relations areas run by Commission directorates-general (DGs), such as development aid (DG INTPA), humanitarian aid (DG ECHO), defence industry (DG DEFIS), and neighbourhood relations, which are divided between DG ENEST (Eastern Europe) and DG MENA (Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf).

The high-stakes trade portfolio could also be considered.

To strengthen the new structure, a dedicated foreign policy department would be established. Until its integration into the EEAS in 2010, the Commission operated a directorate-general for external relations (DG RELEX).

In practice, Kallas would have broader and direct responsibilities within the Commission.

Yet this expansion of authority would ultimately benefit von der Leyen, as she would remain the supreme authority as Commission President, mirroring the hierarchical relationship between a prime minister and a foreign minister at national level.

The EEAS, which Kallas currently runs independently of von der Leyen, would be weakened to reduce the risk of institutional conflict.

This reform requires amending the 2010 decision establishing the European External Action Service (EEAS) rather than the Lisbon Treaty. Unanimous agreement will also be required on this matter.

Historians in Germany are criticising the federal government’s policy regarding Eastern Germans who were “resettled” after the Second World War.

According to a statement issued by the Association of German Historians (VHD), the new draft law concerning the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation—tabled in the Bundestag in mid-August—reduces the complex events of the post-Second World War “resettlement” process to “German suffering”. It ignores the necessary historical context, namely the war of annihilation waged by Germany in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, and thereby creates a “self-referential national narrative” hitherto developed primarily by expellee associations.

Historians point out that this situation jeopardises reconciliation efforts, particularly with Poland and the Czech Republic.

Because this change of focus directly affects the permanent exhibition maintained by the foundation at the Documentation Centre for Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation in a central district of Berlin, it will generate a broad public impact.

This development goes hand in hand with the revival of Berlin’s former “Germanness” policy towards minorities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Post-war German migration exhibition: where is Nazi Germany?

According to German Foreign Policy, the starting point of the recent debates surrounding the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation was the permanent exhibition at the Documentation Centre for Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation, which is operated by the foundation and opened at the Deutschlandhaus in Berlin in 2021.

Spanning two floors, the exhibition chronicles the resettlement of the German-speaking population from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe after the Second World War. The exhibition thus addresses historical events within a two-part context.

As the historian Felix Ackermann, who teaches at the Distance-Learning University of Hagen, described by way of example, the first floor presents “the pre-history of ethnic nationalism and state-enforced migration”, particularly in the context of various cases of flight, expulsion, and resettlement in 20th-century Europe.

Building on this content, the second floor focuses on the post-war resettlement of Germans.

However, this core element of the permanent exhibition is preceded by a very brief overview of the war in which Nazi Germany occupied significant parts of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe.

This aspect is of vital importance because without this knowledge, the complexity of the “resettlement” process cannot be evaluated in its proper context and adequately understood.

The Polish border issue

The overall structure of the permanent exhibition is widely described as a “compromise” reached between right-leaning expellee associations and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation.

This board also includes historians, particularly from Poland and the Czech Republic.

This compromise had hitherto been maintained by the director of the Documentation Centre, the historian Gundula Bavendamm.

However, in mid-2024, expellee associations effectively abandoned this compromise and launched a fierce attack.

For instance, in a letter sent to Bavendamm by Bernd Fabritius (CSU), then president of the Federation of Expellees (BdV), it was stated that the connection between the resettlement process and Germany’s war of annihilation had to be severed, as this “confused context with causality”.

Fabritius also argued that the Federal Republic of Germany’s 1990 recognition of Poland’s national borders should not legally be characterised as a “cession” of the former eastern territories of the German Empire.

This statement recalls that the border treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland merely “confirmed” the border between the two states, described it as “inviolable”, and renounced all “territorial claims”.

The treaty contains no unconditional recognition definitively describing the border as “inviolable”. As Fabritius’s statement implies, this situation could give rise to potential loopholes.

CDU/CSU influence in German expellee associations

The offensive launched by the expellee associations gained momentum following the change of government last year.

Initially, despite the unanimous objections of the Academic Advisory Board, this led to Documentation Centre director Bavendamm’s contract not being renewed in November 2025 and the post being advertised.

Close observers noted that not only the expellee associations played a role in this process, but also the Group of Expellees, Repatriates, and German Minorities within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, which is closely linked to them.

The leader of this group, Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU), is a member of the board of trustees of the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation.

Similarly, Stephan Mayer, deputy chairman of the Expellees Group who took over the BdV presidency from Fabritius, is also a member of this board.

The person they sought to appoint as director of the Documentation Centre to replace Bavendamm was Sven Oole.

Critics had noted that Oole had “no managerial experience in German museums” and had produced no “academic publications” on the subject, but that “as the long-time managing director of the ‘Group of Displaced Persons’, he knew the group’s historical-political goals like the back of his hand”.

Oole’s candidacy failed due to threats from the Scientific Advisory Board that it would resign en masse if he were elected.

In the end, Roland Borchers was selected, but it is said that no one knows “where he intends to lead the foundation”.

Attempts to define Germans as a community based on descent

However, the substance of Borchers’s work is likely to be severely curtailed by the new law on the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation, which was adopted by the federal government in July and submitted to the Bundestag in mid-August.

The Association of German Historians (VHD) directed sharp criticism at this legislation in late May. This criticism stems partly from the fact that Bernd Fabritius, in his role as Federal Government Commissioner for Matters Related to Ethnic German Resettlers and National Minorities, will in future hold an additional seat on the foundation’s board of directors.

According to the VHD’s statement, this will effectively give the BdV “a government-backed majority position on the foundation’s supervisory board”.

In its statement, the VHD explicitly warns against “bad examples of a state-directed remembrance policy”.

Furthermore, the statement contends that the new law focuses the foundation’s work to a certain degree on “German suffering” and replaces “the historical context of flight and expulsion with a self-referential national narrative”.

This situation further exacerbates “existing threats to reconciliation efforts, particularly with the Federal Republic’s Eastern European neighbours, especially Poland and the Czech Republic”.

Finally, the statement notes that, diverging from the openness of recent years, the law “once again defines Germans as a community based on descent”.

No immigration to Germany—except for “ethnic Germans”!

The historian Felix Ackermann also recently addressed the broader political context.

According to Ackermann, the new law aims not only to strip the resettlement process of its historical context and confine commemorative activities to a narrow national framework.

In addition, the federal government is moving the Flight, Expulsion, and Reconciliation Foundation from the purview of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media to the remit of the Federal Ministry of the Interior.

Christoph de Vries, Parliamentary State Secretary at this ministry and deputy chairman of the Expellees Group within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, is also pushing for “the opening of new immigration channels for ethnic kin”.

Indeed, while politicians such as de Vries advocate strict restrictions on immigration, the Federal Ministry of the Interior seeks to revise immigration regulations for members of German-speaking minorities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This revision would allow even German speakers born after 31 December 1992 to obtain German citizenship.

As Ackermann noted, this dual focus on the concept of “Germanness” makes it possible to describe the expulsion regions, just as during the Konrad Adenauer era, as the whole of the “German East”.

The fact that the “responsibility to preserve the history of the German East” now falls once again to the Federal Ministry of the Interior—which, as is well known, is responsible for domestic and not foreign affairs—seems to Ackermann “like a bad joke”; yet, Ackermann says, in reality this situation “brings terrible consequences.”