Economically, the East is still lagging behind the West, even if there is progress.
The new annual report on the unit sees differences above all in another area.
Berlin - In its new annual report on the status of German unity, the federal government sees East-West differences, especially in political attitudes.
Despite many successes on the way to equal living conditions, not all citizens are equally satisfied, according to the report that was available to the German Press Agency and that will be presented next Wednesday. First the news portal "ThePioneer" (Friday) reported about it. "Characteristic for the new federal states are consistently more skeptical, more distant and also more critical basic attitudes towards politics."
For some of the citizens dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy turns into a fundamental rejection of the political order. "This attitude is more common in the new Länder, where the extent of solidified, often populist-tinged support for fundamental criticism of democracy and authoritarian political ideas is greater than in the old Länder," the report said.
"The political attitudes in the new and the old states are thus one of the few remaining fields in which east-west differences persist," it says.
Despite all the differences in political attitudes between the individual federal states, these are "entirely gradual and insubstantial".
The reasons for the rejection of democracy came from various sources: “That ranges from support for the GDR dictatorship to negative transformation experiences and feelings of disadvantage to xenophobia and anti-Semitism.
Many people simply have disappointed expectations of democracy. "
There are still economic differences
Only recently had the Federal Government's Eastern Commissioner, Marco Wanderwitz (CDU), caused a stir with statements about East Germans. "We are dealing with people who are partly socialized by dictatorship in such a way that they have not reached democracy even after thirty years," said Wanderwitz to the "FAZ podcast for Germany". Part of the population has "established non-democratic views". The statements met with a lot of criticism.
According to the annual report, the east has continued to catch up economically.
The economic power of the new federal states and Berlin increased between 2010 and 2020 from 76 to 81 percent of the national average.
“A good 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, there is still a clearly recognizable lag.
At the same time, the regional differences in the new federal states are increasing. ”During the corona pandemic, the east recorded a below-average decline in economic output in 2020.
According to the report, the structurally weakest regions of Germany are still in the new federal states.
At the same time, however, other regions have risen significantly, so that one can no longer speak of a “nationwide structural weakness” in the new federal states.
dpa