Germany claims it has the world’s best bread May 5th is national Bread Day, and Germans are ready to roll May 7th 2026 PERHAPS THE only thing Germans enjoy more than going on holiday, claims Michael Kress, a baker in Baden-Württemberg, is “coming home to buy their beloved bread at the bakery”. Germans’ love for their own loaves can come off as arrogant: last year Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, offended Angolans by complaining he could not find “a decent piece of bread” in their country. But every nation has its cultural touchstones, and on May 5th, while the Dutch hold their annual commemoration of liberation from German occupation in 1945, Germans will be celebrating the day of German bread. Germany has what may be the most diverse bread culture in the world. The official bread registry overseen by Germany’s national bread institute (yes,
really) lists more than 3,000 types. Specialities include pumpernickel, Dreikornbrot (three-grain bread) and Kürbiskernbrot (pumpkin-seed bread). There are specific regional iterations of rolls: Brötchen in the north, Semmeln in the south. In German the word “bread” is partially interchangeable with “meal”—a working lunch is Pausenbrot (break-time bread), dinner is Abendbrot (evening bread). Bavarians, who always do things differently, add Brotzeit (bread time). The German bread institute designates a bread of the year (rye bread is the current title-holder). There’s also a bread ambassador. And Germany is home to the renowned Weinheim baking academy, which awards the degree of “bread sommelier” (Mr Kress’s title). Since 2000 one of the country’s most popular children’s television characters has been a depressed breadloaf called Bernd das Brot (Bernd the bread). Last year his fame spread to America after John Oliver featured him on his talk show. Yet all is not yeasty in Germany’s baking industry. The number of bakeries has crumbled by 59% since 1998, to just under 9,000. Arnd Erbel, a prominent baker, says independent bakeries are being sliced out in favour of industrial ones. Rising energy and ingredient costs, high taxes, bureaucracy and a shortage of skilled labour make things tough for artisanal bakeries, says Jörg Dittrich, the current bread ambassador.
Once crusty consumption habits are shifting too. Supermarkets are winning out over stand-alone bakeries. And despite the huge variety of fresh offerings, the most commonly bought bread is now pre-packaged sliced bread. That may well be because the price of fresh bread keeps climbing— by 40% between 2019 and 2023, nearly double the overall inflation rate. Despite rising costs, the producers have to find some way to make dough, after all. ■ To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//europe/2026/05/02/germany-claims-it-has-the-worlds-best- bread
Inside the Brussels deep state The eurocratic guild at the heart of the EU is seeing its influence ebb May 7th 2026 A mason present for the laying of the cornerstone of a great European cathedral knew he was unlikely to be around to see the edifice completed, decades or even centuries later. And yet in Chartres, Milan, Aachen and beyond, a brotherhood of true believers devoted their lives to building edifices that would endure long after they were dust. One millennium or so later, a new guild is building its own grand projet. Based mostly in Brussels, the staff of the European Commission have toiled in recent decades on a political structure they hope will prove as awe-inspiring—and permanent— as Notre Dame. In place of stained glass and spires, they craft regulations whose complexity rivals baroque duomos.
Cathedrals had their architects, but the real work was done by lowlier folk. The same is true of building the European Union. For all the presidents of the bloc’s various institutions (there are a half-dozen, few of them known outside EU circles), the tone of what happens in Brussels is set by “the eurocrats” who keep the machine chugging along. Some 33,000 officials trudge into the commission’s offices every day, alongside even more in other EU bodies such as the European Central Bank. These mostly lifelong civil servants are the backbone of the European project. As the ones who hold the pen on drafting new legislation, serve as the guardians of the club’s treaties and have sweeping powers in areas such as antitrust and trade negotiations, their biases matter. Predictably members of this guild aspire to a federal EU, even if not as dogmatically as British tabloids once made out. Overwhelmingly they embrace liberal values such as multilateralism, open markets and the rule of law. As deep states go, there are worse traits. But a spectre haunts the eurocratic rank-and-file. The EU has steadily gained powers in the past decade or two, the result of many emergencies from the euro-zone crisis of 2009 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. A consensus has grown from Paris to Berlin and Warsaw (though, alas, not London) that many of the continent’s problems need to be handled collectively. Mega schemes like those to green the continental economy or hobble Russia through sanctions have been handed to the Brussels machine to turn into reality. That might have translated into a surge of influence to the behind-the-scenes toilers there. Not so. Of late the feeling in the corridors of the commission’s directorates—ie, among the civil service that stays on, even as a slew of 27 commissioners appointed by national governments rotate every five years—is that power is ebbing from their grasp. Commission staff feel squeezed by two forces. One of them is exerted by member states, which remain the masters of the European project. National capitals grant Brussels its legitimacy and heft, but also keep a jealous grip on the powers they have delegated. Even when they want the EU to do more, they want to prevent Brussels—whether the commission or the European Parliament, which can occasionally sway policy, too—from becoming too independent a power centre. Regular meetings of EU leaders frame the work of the Brussels machine far more closely than before. Nostalgic types remember the commission as a fountainhead of initiative, able to pursue the European interest in whatever way it saw fit. If that was ever true, it is less
so now. Today frustrated federalists decry the commission as the mere secretariat of the Council, the EU body where ministers meet. “National governments tell us to jump, we ask how high,” grumbles one old Brussels hand. Partly as a result, the power within the commission has shifted, too. Over the past decade or so, the commission’s political leadership—notably its president, who like other commissioners is appointed by national capitals— has hogged the limelight. Working through powerful chefs de cabinets, Jean- Claude Juncker, then Ursula von der Leyen, have centralised the authority once wielded by thousands of eurocrats into a few hands. Ostensibly the idea was to turn their institution from a technocratic apparatus into a “political commission”, as befits an institution making important decisions. The upshot has been that eurocrats who once felt they could push forward their vision of the EU interest now lament being micromanaged by higher-ups instead. On occasion the disgruntlement of the eurocracy has become public. A trade deal last summer between the EU and Donald Trump’s America was unpalatable to the free-traders deep inside the Brussels machine, despite the endorsement of Mrs von der Leyen. The official in charge of trade, Sabine Weyand, has been unusually public in painting it as a grubby deal; on April 28th it was announced that she was out. In antitrust matters, rules that gave eurocrats plenty of leverage—whether levying huge fines on American tech firms or preventing EU governments from subsidising favoured industries, infuriating bigwigs in Paris and Berlin—are in the process of being relaxed under political pressure. To some, keeping the commission’s deep state in check is salutary. With great power comes the need for accountability. Times change, and so should EU rules. As well-meaning as eurocrats may be, the squishy liberal feel of the Brussels Bubble can seem disconnected from the populist rhetoric in the union’s backwaters. Whatever its challenges, the eurocracy is going nowhere. Some 170,000 applicants applied to join the EU institutions as entry-level administrators following a recent recruitment drive, shattering past records. After a battery of tests, fewer than 1% of hopefuls will be granted entry into the guild of
Europe-builders. As successful candidates take up their plum posts-for-life, some will find veteran colleagues dispirited by their recent loss of influence. But there are still many in Brussels who get teary-eyed as they describe their humble role in laying another brick in this continental peace project, as worthy of admiration in their eyes as any cathedral.■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//europe/2026/05/06/inside-the-brussels-deep-state
What to do about Britain’s rising antisemitism? Britain’s teenagers deserve better help getting equipped to vote Watch out for the unintended consequences of Britain’s rent act Britain’s deer are thriving. It’s a nightmare for the countryside The surprising supply-chain choke point for cricket bats Belfast’s murals are an open-air gallery of history and art One decade, two Britains
What to do about Britain’s rising antisemitism? A stabbing attack in a Jewish neighbourhood of London lends fresh urgency to the question May 7th 2026 British Jews are not a large group. Just 287,000 people described themselves as Jewish, in either a religious or an ethnic sense, when filling in the 2021 census of England and Wales. Hindus are more than three times as numerous, and the census counted just under 4m Muslims. And, like many other religious and ethnic-minority groups, Jews are dispersing from the old urban neighbourhoods. The Jewish population is growing most quickly not in long-established Jewish districts like Golders Green, in north-west London, but in commuter towns like Borehamwood. All of which helps explain why a wave of antisemitic attacks in London feels especially terrifying. On April 29th two Jewish men were stabbed in