Comment by h4kor

Reasons I can think of (as a German) from the top of my head:

- Crumbling infrastructure

- Decades of missing investments in education and the public sector

- no digitization

- Unwillingness to move away from ICE vehicles

- Slow internet access and slow build out of fiber network

- Killing future industries (solar, battery ...) by cutting funding/subsidies early

- low wages in European comparison