It's a complex topic. To really grasp it, you have to follow a long line of effects and consequences. When I try to follow it to search for an ultimate single r

It's a complex topic. To really grasp it, you have to follow a long line of effects and consequences. When I try to follow it to search for an ultimate single reason, I end up at "the Euro is to weak for Germany". Historically there has been a circle of world-leading quality of exports rising the value of the Deutschmark, making it harder for Germany to compete, pushing the need for innovation and investments, creating higher payed jobs, producing world-leading exports again. Germany had a highly educated labor-force directly integrated into corporate boards and organized in powerful unions. Germany's oldest party SPD was the political arm of those unions, a labor party. Governments where either right-wing (CDU, Angela Merkel's party) or left-wing (SPD) with a third, liberal party (FDP) switching between the two. In the early 2000s, SPD started a program called "Agenda 2010", liberating the labor market and shattering itself in the process, because it affected its own clientele. They did it as a consequence of Germany being called "the sick man of Europe" in the 90s, because of its economic problems following the unification. The reforms worked in the sense, that the German economy has been running for years without significant recessions. Unemployment has been steadily declining (pre Corona). But the quality of the economy has been changed. Germany is successfully competing in low-paid areas of the economy (e.g. meat-processing), a country like Germany should not be able to compete within an open European market. I think in the end, while having some reasonable liberations in it, Agenda 2010 just accomodated for the fact that Germans (and Northern Europe) are now being paid in a currency, that has not enough value for it's economic output.