독일 뉴스: 내각이 2027년 예산 계획을 논의하면서 이란 전쟁이 재정을 위협

The Cabinet hopes to sign off on core points of its 2027 budget, so it can start to move through parliament. Germany already plans massive borrowing next year, before adequately factoring in Iran-based costs. Follow DW.

Here is a roundup of the top headlines and human interest stories from Germany on Wednesday, April 29, 2026.

The number of job offers in Germany allowing work-from-home options remains high, despite the precarious economic backdrop, a study published on Wednesday shows. 

According to the Bertelsmann Foundation, around 20% of jobs offered home office possibilities, "and so at the same high level as the previous year." 

The foundation analyzed the development of work-from-home options from 2019, before the COVID pandemic that turbocharged the notion, through 2025, looking at some 79 million online job advertisements in Germany. 

In 2019, it found that just 3.7% of online job offers allowed employees to work from home. By 2022, this ratio had risen "strongly" to 16.8%, the foundation said. As of 2024, the rate had reached 20% and stayed more or less stable in 2025, according to the study. 

"Anyone who thought that everyone would have to return to the office in economically difficult times was mistaken," the foundation's labor market expert Gunvald Herdin said. "Home office is here to stay." 

A large number of jobs across all sectors — agriculture, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and so on — do not provide a realistic opportunity to work from home but for so-called white-collar workers in particular, it can be an option.

The foundation named the IT sector as having an especially strong work-from-home culture, with seven of the 10 most prolific home office jobs in IT. But it said that many career areas more commonly filled by women, "which are more marked by direct contact with people," home office options were more limited.

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The federal government's Cabinet aims to sign off on the key points of its 2027 budget on Wednesday, which already foresees the second-largest year of borrowing on record, even before the longer-term economic impact of the war on Iran becomes clear. 

The plans foresee new debts of almost €200 billion (roughly $235 billion) in 2027, more than half of that in the core budget. 

The remainder will come out of the so-called "special funds" (Sondervermögen) for defense spending and infrastructure and climate projects that are exempt from the rules governing how much a German government can borrow each year. 

The government is trying to find cuts worth around €20 billion by July in order to cover some of the costs, a process that in itself is liable to prove contentious. 

Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil's as yet undefined aims to reform income tax to provide relief to low and middle-earners is only liable to put further strain on the calculations. 

Various welfare cuts or reforms and stealth taxes — on things like alcohol, tobacco, cryptocurrency holdings and sugar — are being discussed to help balance the books. 

One of the fastest-growing parts of the outlay is defense spending, amid the pressure on European NATO members to hike their budgets.

The defense spend in 2027 is projected to equate to 3.1% of GDP; that figure consistently stood between 1.1% and 1.2% of GDP between 2011 and 2019.

Meanwhile, this week a temporary reduction on fuel taxes, brought about by the war in Iran, will come into force —  another sign of the conflict's potential to impact both public spending and the broader economy in ways the government cannot yet adequately plan for or anticipate.

The Cabinet is also looking to sign off on its less detailed and longer-term financial planning by starting to outline its plans through 2030, the projected end of the current legislative period.

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Moin from Bonn, thanks for joining us.

Sunny and warmer spring temperatures are forecast across most of Germany this Wednesday, a day after major raids against the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, that nine-goal Champions League thriller at the Allianz Arena between Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain, and more news of rock-bottom birth rates in Germany.

In Berlin, eyes are turning to the Cabinet and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, as the government starts the process of putting the core points of its 2027 budget and its medium term financing plans through the Bundestag. 

It was already going to make grim reading for the bean counters, given plans to continue boosting defense spending, to cut income taxes, and to deal with the ever-anaemic growth that's defined most developed economies ever since 2008.

But the outbreak of war in Iran and the wider Middle East, the need for short-term responses like the cut on fuel taxes that will come into effect on May 1, and drastically revised domestic and international growth forecasts are complicating matters further still. 

The Cabinet is also hoping to approve the government's reform plans for statutory public health insurance, an early step on that policy's road towards becoming law. 

Outside the political arena, the stranded humpback whale "Timmy" is bound for open waters with the help of a special barge that's guiding the stricken marine mammal on the right course away from the Baltic Sea towards its natural habitat in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Stick with us for updates on all these stories, and whatever else is making the news in Germany, during the course of the day.