Germany is in recession, the Eurozone is in crisis, and it will be that most of Europe will eventually follow, UK is bucking the trend to a degree but without certainty on Brexit (and we know who to blame for that) the UK will eventually follow, it will follow anyway if the recession spreads.
Germany (as opposed to UK, France, Italy and other leading economies) has a rather unique financial outlook, possibly as a result of the war, I don't know, but they are a nation of savers, they don't tend to borrow and that's not just at Government level but the population as a whole. The EU (well, lets be honest, Germany really) have been passionate about austerity to the point where most European countries have some degree of austerity measures in place.
Despite austerity we've never really recovered from the banking crisis, to do that economies, gdp has to grow, austerity shrinks economies. You can't grow an economy by making it smaller, sounds obvious but that's what Germany is trying to do with other country's economies. Perhaps when their trade surplus becomes a distant memory, they'll wake up, or maybe we could send them a book by Keynes, he knew a thing or two.
