Germany Weekend News Roundup: Security, Infrastructure and Economic Updates

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said Germany is moving to counter the threats posed by drones. Meanwhile, the transport minister said he wants Deutsche Bahn bonuses tied to punctuality targets.

Here is a roundup of the stories from and about Germany that were hitting the headlines on the weekend of August 8-9, 2026:

Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt says Germany is to expand drone security research

Algeria says it has taken charge of a German citizen kidnapped in Niger some two weeks ago

Low water levels in the Rhine and other rivers are posing a growing risk for Germany, an expert says

Protesters in eastern Germany have called for new elections, while demonstrators in Berlin have demanded a ban on far-right parties

The co-leader of Die Linke ("The Left") on Sunday said the socialist party would do anything in its power to keep the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) out of office.

Luigi Pantisano's remarks on public broadcaster ZDF come with less than a month to go before elections in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD is polling at over 40% and is poised to win an absolute majority in the state parliament in Magdeburg.

Were the AfD to win in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6, it would mark Germany's first far-right state government since World War II.

To prevent that scenario, Pantisano said he would consider supporting the ruling conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, despite Pantisano recently accusing the CDU of implementing "fascist politics."

"We, The Left, have shown in recent years that we take responsibility for this country," Pantisano told ZDF.

If the AfD falls short of an absolute majority, the CDU's incumbent state Premier Sven Schulze would likely have to form a coalition government with The Left.

The AfD has never been in government at either state or federal level, as all other established parties refuse to work with it, under a policy known as the "firewall."

Germany's new transport minister, Steffen Bilger of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said on Sunday that he planned to step up pressure on notoriously delayed railway operator Deutsche Bahn.

He told the mass-market Bild newspaper that bonus payments for Bahn managers would be impacted if government-set punctuality targets are not met.

"There will be a concrete impact on the bonus payments of rail managers if the targets set by the federal government are not met," Bilger said. "I think rail customers and taxpayers have a right to have success genuinely measured."

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government is preparing a new financing agreement for the state-owned company that is to tie funding to specific targets.

Bilger took his ministerial post after Merz reshuffled his Cabinet last month, a move sparked by the resignation of senior conservative lawmaker Jens Spahn over a surrogacy scandal.

Deutsche Bahn is mired in a major structural crisis around delays and cancellations. In 2025, only 60% arrived on time or experienced delays of under six minutes, not including trains that were canceled or ended their journeys prematurely.

The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), who are junior coalition partners in Merz's government, expressed support for the planned measure.

"I expressly welcome the fact that Transport Minister Bilger wants to link the bonus payments of rail managers to punctuality," the SPD's Isabel Cademartori told the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

"People expect the railway to become more reliable," she said. "As politicians, we are providing record investments in infrastructure and expect this to be reflected in punctuality."

The German capital's first World Naked Bike Ride began in Berlin on Sunday.

Hundreds of people participated in the event, cycling either naked or partially naked through the streets of Berlin.

Organizers said that participants can join "dressed or undressed in whatever way they themselves feel most comfortable."

They said the event was to embody the idea that "naked we are all equal" and the German nudism movement, historically known as Freikörperkultur (meaning "free body culture" in Germany) or by the acronym FKK.

Organizers said they aimed to send a message of "tolerance and self-acceptance, closeness to nature and protection of the environment and for inclusion and diversity."

The German capital was experiencing hot weather of around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

The event started in Mauerpark in eastern Berlin and proceeded to the government district.

Organizers said the route was to follow the Berlin Wall Trail to the Schönefeld neighborhood in the southeast of the Berlin metropolitan area. The suburb contains Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

Berlin police are looking into two incidents in which shots were fired, as shooting incidents in the German capital seem on the rise.

In one incident early on Sunday, shots were fired at a hairdressing salon in the Marzahn-Hellersdorf district in the city's northeast, while a gunshot hole was also found at a nearby nightclub, a police spokeswoman said.

She said no one was injured.

That was, however, not the case with another shooting incident in Kreuzberg on Friday evening.

There, a 22-year-old man was shot and injured by an assailant, who fled the scene.

Homicide squad officers are investigating possible links to previous shooting incidents in the area.

Last year, Berlin police set up the Ferrum specialist unit to investigate gun crime.

Algeria said on Saturday that a German citizen kidnapped by an armed criminal group some two weeks ago in neighboring Niger was safe and in the hands of the Algerian military.

The German national was taken in charge by the Algerian army's security services on Friday, according to a statement from the Defense Ministry shared on the official Algerian news agency.

He has now been taken on a special flight from Guezzam in the far south to the Boufarik military base near the capital Algiers, it said, adding that he was in "good health" and would be handed to German authorities "at a later date."

No details were provided on how the German national was freed.

A spokesperson for the German Foreign Ministry told DW it was aware of the case, but added that the government "does not comment on cases involving the abduction of German citizens abroad."

Niger, which has been under military rule since a July 2023 coup, has in the past few years been wracked by violence from jihadis linked to the al-Qaeda or the "Islamic State" (IS) terrorist groups.

Several states have lifted a rule banning most trucks from using motorways on Sundays and public holidays in view of the low river water levels currently hampering cargo vessels.

The DPA news agency reported that a number of trucks have already been sighted on motorways in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).

The NRW transport minister, Oliver Krischer, said that "this exceptional regulation allows us to ensure that delivery chains are maintained and supply shortages are avoided."

Industrial associations have welcomed the lifting of the truck ban.

But one of Germany's main unions, Verdi, has criticized the move.

"This measure comes at the cost of employees in the transport and logistics branch and calls into question the legal protection of Sundays and public holidays as days of rest and recreation," said Uwe Köpke, who heads the union's postal services, freight forwarding and logistics department.

Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland are so far the only other states to have lifted the ban as one of the measures announced by Transport Minister Steffen Bilger last week to mitigate the economic effect of the cargo shipping shortfalls.

In NRW and Lower Saxony, the suspension of the ban is to run initially until August 31, and in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland until September 30 at the latest.

In NRW, all trucks will also be able to use the motorways on Saturdays during the day in the current summer holidays as an exemption to an existing regulation.

New preliminary data released on Sunday has shown that German exports to China fell more than 12% year-on-year from January through June. German imports from China rose 8.9%.

That raises the trade deficit to about €55 billion ($63.6 billion) from €40 billion for the same period in 2025.

The data from the state-run agency Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI) reflects the decreasing reliance by Chinese firms on European imports.

They show that although China remains Germany's top trading partner, the Asian powerhouse is now only the ninth-biggest market for German goods, with far smaller economies like Austria and Switzerland buying more from Germany in 2026.

As recently as 2021, China was Germany's second-biggest export market.

The US remains Germany's single-biggest foreign market, despite a drop in German exports there amid protectionist tariffs introduced under President Donald Trump.

The CEO of arms giant Rheinmetall, Armin Papperger, has said he will not be intimidated despite the many threats that have been made to his safety.

"These jobs must be done, and anyone that can't take the pressure doesn't belong in this job," he told the DPA news agency, saying "chickening out" was no option in his field.

Pappberger, 63, who is believed to be a possible target of Russian murder plots, is under constant police protection at a level similar to that given to Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Rheinmetall is supplying large quantities of weapons to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion, potentially putting the company in Moscow's crosshairs.

Germany's domestic intelligence services recently called on employees in the defense sector to be very vigilant amid the threat of espionage and sabotage by Russian state agencies.

Germany is establishing a new drone security research facility as it seeks to counter a growing threat from UAVs that are possibly under foreign control, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has told Sunday's edition of the Bild tabloid.

"The arms race in drone technology requires dedicated research units to keep pace," he said.

He said the new center, to be established on August 18 at a German Aerospace Center (DLR) test airport in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, would develop and test technologies to protect against drones.

His remarks come after a number of incidents involving drones in the past week raised security concerns.

Germany's most important river is running low unusually early in the year.

Ships are still moving on the Rhine, but falling water levels are forcing many to carry lighter loads. Professor Kerstin Stahl, a hydrologist at the University of Freiburg, explains what is driving the drought and why the consequences reach far beyond shipping.

Some 10,000 people protested in the eastern German city of Plauen to call for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's resignation and for new elections to be held immediately.

While the "Unity for Germany" protest was officially independent of political parties, a local pro-democracy group warned that some of the rally's organizers are right-wing extremists.