Can you imagine an 1,100-pound unexploded bomb being unearthed by a construction crew breaking ground for a Manhattan skyscraper? In Germany, it’s no big deal.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Opposition leader Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to become Germany's next chancellor, said the second presidency of Donald Trump would bring clarity for the European Union as he hosted conservative EU heavyweights in Berlin.

Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union.

Germany's economy shrunk for a second consecutive year in 2024, continuing its struggle with internal and external challenges.

A bitter inheritance feud is plunging the Bismarck dynasty into scandal, exposing decades of grudges and tarnishing a once-revered legacy

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday that he does not expect the United States to halt military aid to Ukraine after President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

German police are investigating an election campaign flyer by a far-right party that looks like a plane ticket and calls for the deportation of “illegal immigrants.”

Germany has sufficient gas in storage to cover demand over the current 2024/25 winter season, despite the end of Russian gas exports to central Europe on Jan. 1, storage operators' group INES said on Thursday.

The German economy shrank for the second straight year in 2024 as worried consumers held back on spending and Chinese competition ate into the country’s traditional exports of cars and industrial machinery.

The weakness underlines the challenge that will face a new government in Berlin following elections in February, including the possibility of fresh Trump tariffs.

Even the former Crown Prince’s son, young Prince Louis Ferdinand, later a popular figure in the US and postwar West Germany, wrote on the Day of Potsdam to one of the advisers of the automaker and antisemite Henry Ford about why he had voted for the Nazis. One could go on, and Malinowski does, at length, but the point is clear.