BERLIN (Reuters) – European Central Bank President Mario Draghi urged banking authorities on Thursday to ensure that tougher capital rules do not lead to a credit crunch, acknowledging for the first time that tighter regulation could hurt fragile economic growth.

The European Banking Authority has said commercial banks should have core Tier 1 capital of at least 9 percent of risk-weighted assets — higher than the 7 percent minimum world leaders have agreed to phase in from 2013.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s resilience to the debt crisis engulfing its neighbors looked to be disintegrating after data showed exports posted their biggest fall in half a year in October, and the Bundesbank forecast a lean winter and feeble growth next year.

With many euro zone members in danger of sliding into recession by the end of the year, a monthly economy ministry report said Germany’s own momentum would slow in the fourth quarter and that weakness in manufacturing and construction had spread to the service industry.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German business sentiment rose unexpectedly in November for the first time in nearly half a year, suggesting Europe’s largest economy is weathering the euro zone debt crisis and turmoil in international markets better so far than experts had feared.

A day after weak demand for a German bond auction raised concern the crisis may be spreading to Europe’s economic powerhouse, the closely-watched Ifo business climate index bucked expectations to rise for the first time since June.

BERLIN, Nov 24 (Reuters) – German business sentiment
rose unexpectedly in November for the first time in nearly half
a year, suggesting Europe’s largest economy is weathering the
euro zone debt crisis and turmoil in international markets
better so far than experts had feared.

A day after weak demand for a German bond auction raised
concern the crisis may be spreading to Europe’s economic
powerhouse, the closely-watched Ifo business climate index
bucked expectations to rise for the first time since June.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany plans net new borrowing of 26.1 billion euros ($35.5 billion) next year, some 4 billion euros more than this year’s estimated borrowing, as a deepening euro zone debt crisis drags on Europe’s largest economy and stalls tax revenue growth.

Germany’s economic growth has surprised on the upside this year, enabling it to more than halve its initial planned new borrowing and take the moral high ground in urging ailing euro zone peers to save and consolidate, after busting euro zone deficit rules itself in 2010.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s “wise men” panel of economic advisers warned the European Central Bank it risks losing credibility by buying the bonds of heavily-indebted euro zone states, and that monetary and fiscal policy are becoming worryingly blurred.

The group, which advises the German government, said in a report published on Wednesday: “The bond buying program dismantles market discipline without establishing any political discipline in its place.”

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany urged Greek leader George Papandreou on Wednesday to provide clarity on how his proposed referendum would impact a bailout package from Europe and the IMF, and what question he would put to the Greek people and when.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said before leaving Berlin for talks with Papandreou in Cannes, ahead of a G20 summit, that Europe wanted to implement a plan to buttress Greece’s finances that was thrashed out only last week.

BERLIN (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Berlin on Tuesday to join 50th anniversary commemorations of the labour pact which brought hundreds of thousands of Turks to then-West Germany to power its post-war industrial boom.

The Turkish-German deal, signed on Oct. 30 1961, was particularly significant to West Berlin, which just two months earlier found itself encircled by a wall built by East Germany’s Communist authorities to prevent its citizens from slipping to freedom through the western half.

BERLIN/MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) – Dozens of Turkish pensioners and their families arrived in Munich on Sunday, dazed but elated after a four-day train journey from Istanbul to commemorate the trip they first made 50 years ago in answer to Germany’s call for workers.

Invited by a then West Germany anxious to find labour to power its post-war industrial boom, the Turkish workers never intended to settle, nor did the Germans want them to.

BERLIN, Oct 28 (Reuters) – A German court on Friday
suspended a parliamentary committee’s right to approve urgent
actions by the euro zone’s bailout fund, potentially delaying
decision-making in Europe’s top economy on key moves to tackle
the bloc’s crisis.

A spokeswoman for the Constitutional Court said it would
investigate whether the planned use of a small closed-door
committee of 9 German lawmakers to consider urgent matters
relating to the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF)
infringed on lawmakers’ rights.