German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Friday rejected the idea that the German economy is the sick man of Europe, comparing it instead to a tired person who needs a “good coffee fever”, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

“Germany is not a sick man,” Christian Lindner told a forum panel in Davos. According to Berlin’s finance minister, Germany looks like a “tired man” after several years of crisis, and forecasts of a slowdown in growth are likely to be a warning sign.

Germany now needs “coffee fever, i.e. structural reforms,” ​​Lindner said. At a panel dedicated to the prospects of the world economy, the German finance minister estimated that 2023 has become an “alarm signal”, adding that the growth of artificial intelligence and the threat of fragmentation of the world economy are among the challenges.

The German economy, the biggest in the eurozone, shrank by 0.3% last year amid persistent inflation, high energy prices and weak external demand.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Christian Lindner said he expects higher medium-term growth rates in Germany. However, analysts believe that the factors that recently slowed the development of the German economy will persist in the first months of 2024, and in some cases may even have a stronger impact.

Christian Lindner convinced the German government to respect the “debt brake”

Lindner, a fiscal conservative from the Free Democratic Party who is part of the “traffic light coalition” led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, played a key role in the decision to adhere to the so-called “debt brake” provided for in the German Constitution when drawing up the draft budget for next year.

Tensions in Berlin’s ruling coalition flared publicly in November after a Constitutional Court ruling stripped the budget of 60 billion euros the government had already earmarked for various investment projects.

Germany’s Greens, Scholz’s other allies, have pushed hard for a further suspension of the debt brake, a constitutional provision that prohibits annual budget deficits of more than 0.35% of GDP, in order to continue funding projects, many of them aimed at the transition period. to a fossil fuel-free economy.

But in the end, Lindner, who advocated spending cuts to close the budget hole, won out.