East Germany has been an albatross,

East Germany doesn’t bring money into the system. Germany subsidies consumption to the tune of 4 percent of GDP for the east,

It has yet to recover from the catastrophic slump of 1990 and 1991 or to reach the level of output of 1988, … In 1998 east Germany contained 18 percent of the working population but...

Instead of money being spent on infrastructure projects, it has been spent propping up the pension system to the tune of billions of marks.