European Elections: German Banks Take the Field

An alliance of German banks, savings banks, and financial institutions said they were “very concerned about the shift to the right in German and European society.” This can be read in an address to the peoples of the Old Continent, which was signed on Thursday, March 8, during the Festival of Europe in Frankfurt.

“A democratic, free and tolerant Europe is the foundation for peaceful coexistence and the basis for economic growth, prosperity and the common good,” wrote in the document the heads of Deutsche Bundesbank (DBB) and the Frankfurt Main Finance center, the initiators of the appeal. The Banking Association of the State of Hesse/Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland, the Association of German Savings Banks, and the Association of Foreign Banks and the State Development Bank (KfW) are also among the supporters of the document presented on the occasion of Europe Day, which is celebrated on May 9.

In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, DBB president Joachim Nagel said the call “found broad support in Frankfurt’s financial circles and beyond.” It seems that more and more organizations and companies want to set an example in terms of tolerance, human rights, and cosmopolitanism. This is all the more important at a time when people peacefully participating in European elections are under attack. We must not leave Europe in the hands of anti-democratic centrifugal forces. Xenophobia and isolation are a threat, not a solution,” Nagel said.

As the European elections in June approach, attacks on politicians in Germany are becoming more frequent: following the May 3 stabbing of Matthias Ecke, one of the main European Parliament candidates for the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), former Family Affairs Minister Franziska Giffey was attacked at the Gertrud Hass library in Berlin’s Rudow district on May 7. And as the political atmosphere in Germany becomes increasingly heated amid serious economic problems – in the first quarter of 2024, German industrial production recorded a 1% decline compared to the same period of last year – the NGO Campact announced that it has “set up a fund of 250,000 euros to provide financial support to politicians who have been – or will be – attacked by extremists in Germany.”