|
Economy
>
Economy
>
Overview
|
Economic activity is limited to the exploitation of natural resources, including petroleum, natural gas, fish, and seals.
|
The German economy - the fifth largest economy in the world in PPP terms and Europe's largest - is a leading exporter of machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and household equipment and benefits from a highly skilled labor force. Like its Western European neighbors, Germany faces significant demographic challenges to sustained long-term growth. Low fertility rates and declining net immigration are increasing pressure on the country's social welfare system and necessitate structural reforms. Reforms launched by the government of Chancellor Gerhard SCHROEDER (1998-2005), deemed necessary to address chronically high unemployment and low average growth, contributed to strong growth in 2006 and 2007 and falling unemployment. These advances, as well as a government subsidized, reduced working hour scheme, help explain the relatively modest increase in unemployment during the 2008-09 recession - the deepest since World War II - and its decrease to 6.5% in 2012. GDP contracted 5.1% in 2009 but grew by 4.2% in 2010, and 3.0% in 2011, before dipping to 0.7% in 2012 - a reflection of low investment spending due to crisis-induced uncertainty and the decreased demand for German exports from recession-stricken periphery countries. Stimulus and stabilization efforts initiated in 2008 and 2009 and tax cuts introduced in Chancellor Angela MERKEL's second term increased Germany's total budget deficit - including federal, state, and municipal - to 4.1% in 2010, but slower spending and higher tax revenues reduced the deficit to 0.8% in 2011. In 2012 Germany reached a budget surplus of 0.1%. A constitutional amendment approved in 2009 limits the federal government to structural deficits of no more than 0.35% of GDP per annum as of 2016 though the target was already reached in 2012. By 2014, the federal government wants to balance its budget. Following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced in May 2011 that eight of the country's 17 nuclear reactors would be shut down immediately and the remaining plants would close by 2022. Germany hopes to replace nuclear power with renewable energy. Before the shutdown of the eight reactors, Germany relied on nuclear power for 23% of its electricity generating capacity and 46% of its base-load electricity production.
|
|
|
Environment
>
Current issues
|
endangered marine species include walruses and whales; fragile ecosystem slow to change and slow to recover from disruptions or damage; thinning polar icepack
|
emissions from coal-burning utilities and industries contribute to air pollution; acid rain, resulting from sulfur dioxide emissions, is damaging forests; pollution in the Baltic Sea from raw sewage and industrial effluents from rivers in eastern Germany; hazardous waste disposal; government established a mechanism for ending the use of nuclear power over the next 15 years; government working to meet EU commitment to identify nature preservation areas in line with the EU's Flora, Fauna, and Habitat directive
|
|
|
Geography
>
Area
>
Comparative
|
slightly less than 1.5 times the size of the US
|
slightly smaller than Montana
|
|
|
Geography
>
Area
>
Comparative to US places
|
slightly less than 1.5 times the size of the US
|
slightly smaller than Montana
|
|
|
Geography
>
Area
>
Total
|
14.06 million sq km
Ranked 6th.
39 times more
than
Germany
|
357,022 sq km
Ranked 64th.
|
|
|
Geography
>
Climate
|
polar climate characterized by persistent cold and relatively narrow annual temperature ranges; winters characterized by continuous darkness, cold and stable weather conditions, and clear skies; summers characterized by continuous daylight, damp and foggy weather, and weak cyclones with rain or snow
|
temperate and marine; cool, cloudy, wet winters and summers; occasional warm mountain (foehn) wind
|
|
|
Geography
>
Coastline
|
45,389 km
Ranked 7th.
19 times more
than
Germany
|
2,389 km
Ranked 55th.
|
|
|
Geography
>
Elevation extremes
>
Highest point
|
sea level 0 m
|
Zugspitze 2,963 m
|
|
|
Geography
>
Geographic coordinates
|
90 00 N, 0 00 E
|
51 00 N, 9 00 E
|
|
|
Geography
>
Location
|
body of water between Europe, Asia, and North America, mostly north of the Arctic Circle
|
Central Europe, bordering the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, between the Netherlands and Poland, south of Denmark
|
|
|
Geography
>
Natural hazards
|
ice islands occasionally break away from northern Ellesmere Island; icebergs calved from glaciers in western Greenland and extreme northeastern Canada; permafrost in islands; virtually ice locked from October to June; ships subject to superstructure icing from October to May
|
flooding
|
|
|
Geography
>
Natural resources
|
sand and gravel aggregates, placer deposits, polymetallic nodules, oil and gas fields, fish, marine mammals (seals and whales)
|
coal, lignite, natural gas, iron ore, copper, nickel, uranium, potash, salt, construction materials, timber, arable land
|
|
|
Geography
>
Terrain
|
central surface covered by a perennial drifting polar icepack that, on average, is about 3 meters thick, although pressure ridges may be three times that thickness; clockwise drift pattern in the Beaufort Gyral Stream, but nearly straight-line movement from the New Siberian Islands (Russia) to Denmark Strait (between Greenland and Iceland); the icepack is surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling landmasses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonosov Ridge)
|
lowlands in north, uplands in center, Bavarian Alps in south
|
|