Parties prepare for key state coalition talks

In light of the war with Iran, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul arrived in Cyprus for crisis talks.

On Tuesday, Wadephul is set to discuss the situation in the Middle East with his counterpart, Konstantinos Kombos, in Nicosia, the capital.

Last week, an Iranian-made drone struck the British air base in Akrotiri, Cyprus.

The agenda for Wadephul’s talks with Kombos also includes topics related to Cyprus’s current term leading the EU presidency.

Since 2004, Cyprus has been a member of the European Union, but it is not a member of NATO.

Two government ministers on Monday said they’d ask the cartel office to review increases in the prices for diesel and petroleum/gasoline at German filling stations since the war broke out in Iran. 

Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil alleged that rising fuel prices, which accelerated again on Monday after calming over the weekend, according to the ADAC motoring club, no longer reflected developments on the oil markets fairly. 

“We are seeing that some price gouging is taking place, that the current political situation is being used in order to drive one’s own profits upwards,” Klingbeil said. Klingbeil suggested at a Brussels meeting of his EU counterparts that transparency requirements for oil companies could be made more rigorous, to make it easier to ascertain if pricing was fair. 

“We are currently discussing the concrete measures within the federal government,” Klingbeil said. 

Diesel passed €2.20 per liter on average on Monday morning, according to the ADAC, while the cheapest gasoline was nearing €2 per liter. That’s equivalent to well over $7.50 per US gallon of gasoline, or roughly $8.30 for a gallon of diesel.

Meanwhile, Klingbeil’s SPD ally Economy Minister Katherian Reiche announced that the country’s cartel bodies would investigate the pricing. 

She told the “Table.Briefings” podcast that authorities would check whether a situation might have been created “which is reflected on the markets, but not to this extent.” 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that responsibility for ending the war in Iran lay with the Iranian leadership alone. 

“The sooner the mullah regime stops, the sooner this war will end,” Merz said at a Berlin press conference. “It is the sole responsibility of this regime and the so-called Revolutionary Guard to cease hostilities. As long as that is not on the case, I work on the assumption that Israel and the US will continue their defense against this regime.” 

The comments came on the 10th day of a sprialing conflict that began when the US and Israel launched a widespread attack on Iran’s leadership. Hundreds of people have been killed inside Iran, while retaliatory Iranian attacks against a series of other countries have killed far smaller numbers to date. 

The chancellor said that the “threat posed by this regime” stretched “far beyond the region itself,” citing Iranian support for Russia as an example.

Merz described Iran as “the center of international terrorism” and said “this center must be shut down.” 

“And the Americans and the Israelis are doing it in their own way,” he said. 

German tour operator TUI and the Oman Tourist Development Company (OMRAN) have paused a planned partnership amid the outbreak of fighting in the Middle East. 

TUI said in a statement on Monday that OMRAN had informed it that the agreed project timeline of a March 31 launch was no longer achievable. 

“Consequently, the project’s implementation will be suspended. This includes both the planned ownership and development of five new hotels in the Dhofar Governorate, as well as OMRAN’s planned acquisition of a 1.4% shareholding in TUI,” the statement said. 

TUI said the two parties would continue to discuss the partnership, after they agreed to a joint venture last September. 

State-owned OMRAN was to provide property and capital while tour operator TUI would organize booking. 

Air travel to the Middle East has been severely disrupted in recent days. 

A German snowshoe hiker fell roughly 400 meters (around 1,300 feet) to his death in an avalanche in the Stubai Valley in Austria, police said on Monday. 

The 59-year-old from the Stuttgart area was in the mountains in the state of Tirol when he was caught up in the avalanche. 

Two mountain guides immediately alerted rescue services but by the time the man was located he was already dead. 

The three enthusiasts had been on the trail on Sunday on the Stubai High Path trail through the Alpine region near Neustift, at an altitude of around 2,000 meters, when the avalanche struck. The man was trying to traverse a steep slope at the time. He was wearing a location aid that enable his rapid recovery but medics could only pronounce him dead.

New figures from the government statistics agency show Germany imports an unusually small share of oil from the Middle East by the broader standards of the EU. 

Only 6.1% of crude oil imports hailed from the Middle East, most of that from Iraq (4.2%), the UAE (1.1%) and Saudi Arabia (0.8%). 

Several countries from the region including Iran did not deliver any crude oil to Germany last year. 

The EU average is roughly twice as high, with 13% of 2025 crude oil imports hailing from the Middle East according to the Eurostat statistics agency. Saudi Arabia and Iraq are the largest two suppliers. 

Global oil prices have come under strain amid the attacks on Iran, which produces roughly 5% of global oil supplies, and the resultant limitations on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s exported oil typically sails. 

The top sources for German crude oil imports in 2025 were as follows: 

• Norway, 2.5 million tons
• The United States, 12.4 million tons
• Libya, 10.4 million tons
• Kazakhstan, 10.3 million tons
• The UK, 8.7 million tons
• Guyana, 4.2 million tons

Germany’s football federation has opened an investigation after an emotional outburst by the stadium announcer of Bundesliga club FC Cologne.

The disciplinary committee of the German Football Association said proceedings were initially launched against the club itself, which is responsible for the conduct of its staff under federation rules.

Announcer Michael Trippel had reacted angrily during Cologne’s 2–1 home defeat to Borussia Dortmund, describing a red card for Jahmai Simpson-Pusey over the stadium loudspeaker as “Disgraceful. Revolting.”

He later criticized a late penalty decision, telling fans after the match that a clear handball by a Dortmund player in the box had not even been reviewed.

The comments drew criticism, including from within Cologne. Club chief Philipp Türoff said such outbursts over the stadium microphone were inappropriate, while the organization representing referees in German professional football called the remarks unacceptable.

Stadium announcers are required to remain neutral. Trippel has since apologized, telling the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper he was sorry for the statements and for anyone who felt offended.

The general secretary of the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) Nicole Büttner has told the Rheinische Post newspaper that she will keep a pledge to shave off her hair if her party missed out on the 5% hurdle needed to guarantee representation in the Baden-Württemberg election 

The FDP, which also missed the crucial 5% hurdle at last year’s national elections, slid to sixth place with just 4.4% of the vote in the southwestern state, according to preliminary results. 

“Liberals stay true to their word, even in defeat,” Büttner said, using the old-fashioned and German definition of liberal rather than the modern predominantly US interpretation of the term. “I hold my promises just as decidedly as we form the antithesis of stagnation and pessimism.” 

She did not specify exactly when the clippers would be fired up. 

Once a perennial coalition partner for the CDU and SPD, the pro-business party with a strong tradition of also standing up for individuals’ rights is currently struggling to secure parliamentary representation all around the country. 

Its spell in the last coalition government was marked by several clashes with its more left-leaning partners the Social Democrats and the Greens, with the FDP taking probably the lion’s share of the blame for the government’s premature collapse and early elections last year.

Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz sacking Finance Minister and former FDP leader Christian Lindner fired the starting pistol for the early vote. 

The secretary general of the Social Democrats (SPD) Tim Klüssendorf has said there must be consequences following the dire showing in Sunday’s vote by Germany’s oldest party. 

The SPD managed just 5.5% of the vote as the Greens and CDU vied for top spot while the far-right AfD also logged gains in the southwestern state. 

“People don’t believe in us enough as the force that will ultimately secure jobs in Germany,” Klüssendorf said, saying party analysis suggested their campaign had identified the right issues — like cost of living, the economy and jobs — but failed to associate the SPD with delivering on them. 

It’s the SPD’s worst result in any state election in post-war Germany, less than half the 11% it scored in the state in 2021.

The SPD believes its performance may have suffered further given the close fight between the CDU and the Greens, suspecting that some SPD supporters might have voted for Özdemir to try to stymy the conservatives. 

Manuel Hagel has said that negotiations to continue a coalition with the Greens in Baden-Württemberg would be difficult. 

The CDU had campaigned on the basis of increasingly difficult cooperation with the Greens and the desire to lead a new, different coalition, even though the Greens in the southwestern industrial powerhouse tend to represent much more business-friendly policies than parts of the party’s grassroots. 

“What we said before the election in terms of content remains correct after the vote,” Hagel said at CDU headquarters in Berlin on Monday. “There is no automatism in the formation of a state government.” 

He said the state faced a “new” and “unique” situation, with the two largest parties holding exactly the same number of seats in the legislature. 

Hagel did not comment explicitly on his party floating the idea of sharing the state premiership, but he did say: “What’s clear is that a stalemate is a stalemate.” 

Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking alongside Hagel at a press conference, said that any negotiations would depend “very strongly on policy questions.” 

Merz said that Özdemir had “conducted a citizen-led election campaign, and so then there must be citizen-led politics in Baden-Württemberg.” He said this meant there should be “no left and no green policies akin to those which the youth wing of the Greens demands.” 

Cem Özdemir has rejected the idea of sharing the state premiership of Baden-Württemberg with the CDU candidate Manuel Hagel as “nonsense,” following the Greens’ narrow victory in the state elections. 

Özdemir said that his party had come out on top in the vote and that it was standard practice for them to appoint the head of a new state government, even if the margin had been just a single vote. 

“The situation is simply too serious for any kind of nonsense,” Özdemir said when asked about sharing the office, saying he was trying to conduct “grown-up politics.” 

“I want to lead this government,” he said. 

Özdemir had however earlier offered the CDU a coalition negotiation process “at eye level” between two more or less equal partners.

Greens, CDU rule out working with AfD

Given that the Greens and the CDU both rule out cooperation with the AfD, a position Chancellor Friedrich Merz repeated on Monday, a coalition between the two largest parties seems by far the most likely and viable alliance.

The SPD are not a large enough potential partner to provide either party a majority.

The Greens’ Franziska Brantner turned the question of sharing the top job into a dig at the CDU’s opposition to shorter working weeks. 

“Until yesterday I was led to understand that the CDU was against ‘lifestyle part-time.’ So, we are in favor of full time state premiers,” she said. 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed “concern” about the impact the US-Israel war with Iran is having on oil prices.

“We know that this could have an impact on the German economy,” Merz said regarding the spike in energy prices.  

Brent crude oil prices spiked above $100 (€86.6) a barrel over the weekend, prompting the risk of more energy inflation in Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had previously caused European energy prices to surge, as many EU nations such as Germany forced themselves to get away from Russian oil and natural gas.  

In addition to his comments on energy, Merz emphasized his disapproval of the Iranian regime, calling it “the center of international terrorism.”

“It is solely up to this regime and the so-called Revolutionary Guards to cease hostilities,” Merz said. “Until that happens, I assume that Israel and America will continue their defense against the regime.” 

Merz criticized Iran’s support for Russia in its assault on Ukraine. He also said Iran is “largely responsible for the terror of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.” 

German prosecutors have closed proceedings against conservative lawmaker Jens Spahn over the procurement of protective masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The public prosecutor’s office said a review of initial allegations found no factual indications of a criminal offense, meaning no formal investigation was opened.

Spahn, a member of the conservative Christian Democrats and former health minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel, had faced more than 170 criminal complaints alleging bribery and breach of trust linked to the government’s pandemic-era mask procurement.

During the COVID-19 crisis, the Health Ministry ordered billions of protective masks worth several billion euros, 5.8 billion masks at a unit price of around €1 ($1.16) each, a large share of which ultimately went unused.

The health minister ultimately failed to accept or pay for a large number of the masks he ordered and Germany’s government could face payments of some €2.3 billion ($2.7 billion) to compensate health product manufacturers.

The Federal Audit Office, which monitors the use of taxpayers’ money, has described the order as a “massive overprocurement.”

Munich mayor Dieter Reiter of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) will face a runoff after failing to secure an outright majority in the city’s mayoral election.

With nearly all precincts counted Sunday, the incumbent had 35.6% of the vote, well short of the threshold needed to win in the first round. Dominik Krause of the Green Party placed second with 29.4%, while Clemens Baumgaertner of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) trailed on 21.4%.

Reiter said he was disappointed with the result and acknowledged making “one or two mistakes” during the campaign that may have influenced the vote. The 67-year-old is seeking a third term and said he will now focus on rebuilding trust ahead of the runoff in two weeks.

The veteran mayor has recently faced criticism over a remark in the city council widely perceived as racist and questions about transparency surrounding his involvement with soccer club Bayern Munich, where he is expected to join the supervisory board.

The result came as there was a huge disappointment in Bavaria’s neighboring state of Baden-Württemberg, where a state election was being held. There the party secured only 5.5% of the vote, its worst ever showing in a state vote.

Germany’s industrial sector has started the year weakly, with both production and new orders falling in January, official data shows.

The Federal Statistical Office said industrial output dropped 2.5% from the previous month after seasonal and calendar adjustments. New orders plunged 11.1%, though the decline was just 0.4% when large contracts were excluded.

The fall in production was driven mainly by weaker output in metal products, while the pharmaceutical industry and manufacturers of data processing equipment, electronics and optical products also recorded sharp declines.

The statistics office said the sharp drop in orders was partly due to large contracts in December that had pushed orders to their highest level since February 2022. Over a three-month period, orders rose 7.4%, or 1.5% excluding large orders.

Sebastian Dullien, scientific director at the Institute for Macroeconomics and Economic Research (IMK), said the January declines partly reflected corrections after strong previous months and special effects. But he warned that the US and Israeli attack on Iran and rising energy prices have now become decisive factors for the economic outlook.

The Economy Ministry says developments in the Middle East and sharply higher oil and gas prices have significantly increased the risk of a setback to the expected industrial recovery.