Depressed in the West

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,"Germany has been bled dry" by the cost of reunification, notes Focus. Versions I and II of the solidarity pacts, which were concluded between the Länder of the Federal Republic and the DDR to provide support for the latter's ruined economy (pact II will run until 2019) will eventually pump "1,600 billion euros into the former East Germany." According to a study by the Free University of Berlin cited by the weekly, "the schemes have already provided local governments with the most prosperous moment in their history." As Focus explains, "municipalities in the east" which enjoy the rudest financial health, "now have better infrastructure than their counterparts in the West." It is because of the pact that "Dresden (in the East) can announce that it has zero euros debt; whereas Gelsenkirchen [in the West] has debts of 302 million, which will force it to close its public pools". Görlitz (in Saxony, the east), "was able to spend half a billion euros on restoring its historic centre," while every resident in the towns of the Ruhr [in the West] has to guarantee the repayment of 7,500 euros debt by the regional state… and so on.