The Brexit is a huge burden on the German economy and is expected to cost half a percent of economic growth if the British leave the EU without agreement.

This is what Dieter Kempf, the President of German Industrial Union, the umbrella association of an estimated 100,000 companies in the Federal Republic, said in conversation with the Funke Mediengruppe.

One in four companies in Germany doing business with Great Britain will be forced to fire people, Kempf estimates. According to him, the German economy has already suffered considerable damage in the run-up to the Brexit. Since the UK referendum on the Brexit in 2016, German exports to Great Britain have fallen by more than 5%. That is at odds with the growth of exports to other EU countries during that period.