Deutschland Update #15
Topics this week:
Coalition’s LGBTQ action plan
Good inflation news
Stolen treasure
The coalition presents LGBTQ legislative agenda
The federal government has announced a cross-ministerial legislative agenda to overhaul the legal framework for the acceptance and protection of the rights of the LGBTQ community in Germany. Sven Lehmann, the Queer Commissioner for the governing coalition (a role that the current government introduced when it came into power this year) formally announced the plan at a press conference last week.
The goal of the “Action Plan for the Acceptance and Protection of Sexual and Gender Diversity”, as the program has been titled, is to improve the daily lives and legal protections for the LGBTQ community. “All people should be able to live self-determined, free, and secure in our society,” Lehmann said in the press conference. “For this, an active politics against discrimination is necessary. This action plan is the agenda for a politics of respect and the acknowledgment of diversity.”
The plane covers a variety of thematic areas, which I have listed here below along with some examples of the legislative action that they encompass:
- Legal recognition: the government intends on reforming the laws that govern the allocation of parental rights for children born into same-sex families. The laws that govern the self determination of name and gender for trans people will also be reformed in order to remove long-standing legal hurdles.
- Participation: the government will initiate research into the effectiveness of civil society and healthcare offerings available to members of the LGBTQ community.
- Security: the government will implement measures to increase the protection of the LGBTQ community from abuse and violence. A national statistical register of anti-LGBTQ violence will be established. The government hopes that by cataloging and publishing such statistics the probability that victims of such violence will actually report it to the authorities will increase.
- Health: Measures will be taken to increase the sensibilities of medical professionals to the particular issues and concerns facing the LGBTQ community, as well as increasing access to care for the trans community specifically. The ban on gay men donating blood, in place since the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, will be lifted.
- Strengthening Community Structures: the government will support the continued expansion of civil society groups that work to support various parts of the LGBTQ community.
- International: The government will increase its advocacy for human rights and LGBTQ acceptance and protection globally through its diplomatic missions.
Context:
These reforms are long overdue. Despite significant progress in the last decades in terms of the acceptance of the LGBTQ community, including the introduction of same-sex marriages, the legal code remains in many respects discriminatory. The “Transsexuellengesetz” that currently codifies the process of legally changing names and gender identities imposes arduous and intrusive burdens on trans people (see the short film embedded below which some colleagues of mine produced on the topic last year). The laws governing the allocation of parental rights for the children of same sex couples similarly imposes burdens on those parents that amount to blatantly unequal treatment before the law (I wrote a long-form piece on the topic at the beginning of the year that looks at this issue in more depth). LGBTQ people are subject to violence and abuse in public; the violent attacks on Cristopher Street Day celebrations this summer offer prominent and tragic examples, but in no way come near representing the full extent of such violence. The state needs to create the conditions that enable the victims of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes to feel comfortable in reporting those incidents to the authorities - that they feel respected and heard, and can have confidence that something will be done about it.
It is commendable that the government has taken this major step in the process to get these reforms implemented. Mr. Lehmann also seems to have been given the requisite portfolio as a coordinator of the process to get it done – he made clear in the press conference that while individual ministries will be responsible for implementing reforms that fall under their purview, the action plan represents a unified effort of the entire government. As the Queer Commissioner he will be responsible for coordinating the process between the relevant ministries, civil society organizations, as well las the state governments.
If they are successful, we could see many of these reforms come into force within the next two years.
Producer Price Index takes unexpected dip
There is some good news on the inflation front. The Federal Statistical Service (DESTATIS) released new data this week that shows an unexpected drop in the producer price index (PPI), which is a measure of the overall price level for inputs at the producer level. The PPI was up by 34.5% compared to October 2021 - in August and September it was up 45.8%. So while there was still a significant year-on-year price level increase between October 2021 and 2022, the rate of increase has dropped significantly. DESTATIS also reported that compared to September of this year, the October PPI dropped by 4.2%, the first month-on-month decrease since May 2020.
The news caught most observers off guard. A recent survey of German economists conducted by Reuters predicted a slight reduction of the PPI in October to 44.9%. The primary driver of the reduction is the steep decline in energy prices paid by producers in October. While energy prices have risen dramatically in the eight months since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, the market has begun to stabilize. Electricity and natural gas prices were down by 10.4% in October in comparison to September this year.
The optimistic take on this surprising development in the inflation story is that a drop in the PPI may very well precede a drop in the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the price levels at the consumer level. “The surprisingly strong reduction in producer prices could be an indication that we have overcome the inflationary peak,” the economist Jens Südekum told the Handelsblatt newspaper. “Inflation may fall faster than many had presumed,” he said.
However, the relation between the PPI and the CPI is complicated by the mechanics of supply chains and long-term business planning. It could still be some time before a sustained decline in the PPI is reflected in an easing of the pressure on consumer pocketbooks.
Context:
When producers experience changes in the price levels of their inputs, those fluctuation are seldom passed on to consumers one-to-one or in real-time. A survey published this week by the Leibnitz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich showed that German businesses have only partially been able to pass on recent price increases onto their customers. The survey of 6,500 firms found that on average they have only been able to pass on 34% of their incurred price increases in the last nine months. An overall drop in consumer demand, competitive pressures, as well as long-term contracts have inhibited businesses’ ability to pass on price increases.
The same survey also found that on average, businesses still intend on increasing their cost passthrough level to 50% by April 2023.
This means that in the medium-term we should still expect to see incremental increases in the CPI. However, in the long-term, such an unexpected drop in the PPI points to a future where the current inflationary period is a thing of the past.
Hunt is on for stolen Celtic treasure in Bavaria
Police investigators in the Bavarian town of Manching, near Ingolstadt, were able to identify the cause of a regional service disruption that left some 13,000 customers without telephone and internet services on Tuesday evening. Guido Limmer, vice president of the Bavarian State Police said that at 1:17 in the morning “a number of cables had been clipped at a Telekom distribution node in the city.” Coincidentally, that same night an ancient Celtic treasure, 483 gold coins dating back more than 2000 years that were found at an archeological dig site in the area in 1999, had disappeared from the local Celtic-Roman Museum.
“The break-in must have occurred in the early morning hours,” a Bavarian State Police spokesperson said in a press conference on Tuesday morning. “It was classic, like in a bad movie.” The thieves were able to make away with the gold without ever raising the alarm. It was only when workers arrived the next morning to find the museum’s archeological centerpiece missing that the authorities were notified and a connection was drawn between the theft and the communications disruption that occurred in the night. The alarm system at the museum had also been disabled by the thieves.
The value of the collection of gold coins is estimated to be in the millions of euros, with the added value derived of their historical significance. However, that significance will also make it difficult to sell them on the black market, leading investigators and museum officials to fear that the most likely outcome is that the thieves will melt them down and sell the gold at market value. The coins together weigh 3.724 kg, and are made of pure gold. The amount of the precious metal has a current market value of €250,000.
Context:
Germany has seen its fair share of Hollywood-worthy museum break-ins in the last years.
In 2017 an enormous solid-gold coin was stolen from the Bode Museum in Berlin. The thieves were able to enter the museum through a window under the cover of darkness and successfully haul off the 100 kg heavy coin worth 3.75 million euros. A group of young men associated with a well know organized crime family in Berlin were later charged in the theft. The coin itself was never recovered. The authorities presume that it was melted and then sold off.
In November 2019 a group of thieves broke into the Green Vault Museum in Dresden, which houses the larges treasure collection in Europe. They made away with 21 diamond encrusted jewelry pieces worth 113 million euros. Investigators were able to make a number of arrests in the case, and two of the suspects were also involved in the theft of the gold coin from the Bode Museum in Berlin. They had yet to be arrested in connection to that investigation when the break-in at the Green Vault took place.
The Bavarian State Police said in a statement that they are already in contact with the authorities in Berlin and Dresden, and are investigating possible connections between the three incidents.