Michael Theurer: The Deutsche Bundesbank's 2025 Financial Stability Review
Introductory statement by Mr Michael Theurer, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, at the presentation of the Deutsche Bundesbank's 2025 Financial Stability Review, Frankfurt am Main, 6 November 2025.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.
Check against delivery
Ladies and gentlemen,
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
This quip by Danish physicist Niels Bohr perfectly sums up the starting point from which we produced the twentieth edition of the Bundesbank's Financial Stability Review.
Exactly one year ago today, on the morning of 6 November 2024, the outcome of the US presidential election had become clear. Since then, a lot has changed and the world has become more uncertain. We, too, had to revise some of our previous assessments on the state of economic activity and the macro-financial environment. In addition to the US elections, this is also related to the rising geopolitical tensions over recent years. At the same time, structural challenges are weighing on the German corporate sector to an increasing degree.
1 Macro-financial environment: challenges and risks
Ladies and gentlemen, the erratic course of US trade policy is weighing on the global economy, not least on Germany's export-dependent industry. Since the trade agreement between the European Union and the United States was reached at the end of July, imports from the EU have been subject to an average tariff of 14 % (see the right-hand panel of the chart). This means that tariffs have risen by more than 12 percentage points compared with the situation before. Thus far, however, the agreement is only a political memorandum of understanding and is not legally binding, and the legality of the tariffs has not yet been fully clarified. US trade policy therefore remains a significant factor of uncertainty (see the left-hand panel of the chart).