Country Sheet : Germany

Information file

Last Update on 29th October 2024

GERMANY

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In English - version of 29th October 2024

Geography

Area : 357,022 km²

Borders : 3,621 km; Austria: 784 km, Belgium: 167 km, Czech Republic: 646 km, Denmark: 68 km, France: 451 km, Luxembourg: 138 km, Netherlands: 577 km, Poland: 456 km, Switzerland: 334 km

Coastline : 2,389 km

Capital : Berlin

Official language : German

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Population

Population : 84,358,845 (2023 est.)

Crude natural change rate : - 4‰ (2023)

Population repartition: 13.6% under 15 years old, 22.1% over 65 years old (2022)

Foreign residents: EU nationals 5.2%, non-EU nationals 7.0% (2019)

Crude net migration rate: - 6,9‰ (est. 2023)

First time asylum applicants: 329.120 (2023)

Life expectancy: men 79.4 years, women 84.2 years (2023 est.)

Religions: Roman Catholic 26%, Protestant 23.7%, Muslim 3.6%, other 4.8%, none 41.9% (2021 est.)

Ethnic groups: German 86.3%, Turkish 1.8%, Polish 1%, Syrian 1%, Romanian 1%, other/stateless/unspecified 8.9% (est. 2020)

Source : Eurostat, World Fact Book

Economy

Currency: Euro

GDP: € 4,121,160 millions (2023)

GDP per capita (PPS): € 48,750 (2023)

GDP growth : -0.3% (2023)

Inflation: 1.6% (September 2024)

Public debt: 63.4% of GDP (Q1 2024)

Unemployment: 6% (September 2024)

Budget balance: -2% of GDP (2023)

Source : Eurostat, OECD, European Commission, FMI, Trading Economic

Political system

Federal Republic, representative parliamentary democracy.

Head of state: Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD candidate supported by 4 other political parties (CDU, CSU, FDP and Green) was elected on 12th February 2017 by 931 votes out of the 1136 cast by the German federal assembly (Bundesversammlung). He took office on March 19th and was reelected on February 13th 2022.

Chancellor: Olaf Scholz, following the elections of September 26th 2021, is leading a SPD-Green-FDP coalition. He took office on December 8th 2021.

Bicameral parliamentary system: The Bundesrat (Federal council or Senate) represents the 16 Länder. It comprises 69 members who are proportionally divided amongst the Länder according to their populations. The Bundestag (National Parliament) comprises 736 representatives who are elected for four years by direct federal universal suffrage. Every citizen has two votes. Half of them are directly distributed among 299 electoral constituencies, the other half through party lists of the different Länder, and 111 (for the current term of office) are “overhang mandates” (the Parliament usually comprises 598 representatives). This amount of additional mandates is equally established by the Sainte Lägue/Schepers procedure.