Archive: https://archive.is/2025.03.21-101658/https://www.ft.com/content/bf9dde37-2dc8-44df-b5f5-ef5dece888f6

On Friday, the constitutional reform secured the support of more than two-thirds of the seats in the Bundesrat, the upper house that represents Germany’s 16 federal states. 

The changes, which were approved by the Bundestag earlier this week, loosen the country’s constitutional borrowing restrictions to allow unlimited defence spending and create a special €500bn, 12-year vehicle to modernise the country’s infrastructure.

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German trains are less punctual than Britain’s ‘broken’ railways

Olaf Scholz mocked UK trains. FT analysis of 1.9bn data points show they are more reliable than Germany’s network

Germany’s rail problems have become so bad that Deutsche Bahn’s intercity service is less punctual than even the worst operator in Britain, a country the German chancellor mocked for its “broken tracks and bad trains”.

Olaf Scholz last week dismissed the idea of privatising Germany’s rail system in a debate for Germany’s snap elections, arguing that it would “end as badly as in England, where nothing works any more”. 

But Financial Times analysis of railway data shows Germany’s state-owned rail group Deutsche Bahn consistently delivering one of the least reliable services in central Europe — and even when compared with the UK network, which is routinely criticised for poor performance at home and abroad. 

About 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s int