Overview

• An advisory council handpicked by Economics Minister Katherina Reiche presented a Wachstumsagenda in Berlin that labels the downturn a structural crisis with risks of deindustrialization and eroding competitiveness.
• The plan proposes linking the statutory retirement age to life expectancy, abolishing the Rente mit 63, and slowing increases in current pensions.
• The advisers call for rolling back growth‑hampering rules by easing stringent data‑protection requirements and repealing the German supply‑chain law and a new EU directive, while redirecting capital and labor toward high‑productivity, fast‑growing firms.
• To create fiscal room, the paper urges cuts to social and care entitlements, including scrapping care level 1 and relying more on private supplementary insurance for certain risks.
• Debt‑financed programs should be temporary and targeted to future investments, the council warns, as official projections point to roughly 0.2% growth in 2025 and a recovery to about 1.3–1.4% in 2026–2027.