Germany is not the “sick of Europe,” the president of the country’s central bank, the Bundesbank, Joachim Nagel, told CNBC on Wednesday, while acknowledging that economic growth “is not good this year,” CNBC reports.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the World Bank and the IMF in Marrakesh, Nagel said that we should not compare the current economic situation in Germany to the last time it was called the “sick man of Europe”.

Analysts first coined the name in 1998, when the country was going through a costly post-unification economic fallout.

“This is a completely different situation. Some structural changes are needed, but if we take, for example, the labor market, we still more or less keep the economy in employment. I think there is an understanding that we have to do something, but we are not sick of Europe,” Nagel said.

The debate over whether Germany should be labeled “sick” again is fueled by predictions that Europe’s biggest economy will be the only major European economy to shrink in 2023.

“This year is bad, [dar] growth will return next year,” Nagel said.

The Bundesbank estimates Germany’s economy will grow by 1.2% next year, compared with the 0.3% contraction it sees in 2023.

The International Monetary Fund took a slightly more pessimistic view, forecasting that Germany would experience “continued weakness” in its growth and that the economy would grow by 0.9% in 2024, according to data released on October 10.

The IMF’s growth forecast for Germany is lower than the average expected for the euro area of ​​1.2%.