Thirty years after German reunification: population health between solidarity and global competitiveness

The reunification of Germany was not planned. The sudden economic and political crisis of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1989 surprised political elites on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In a matter of weeks, the East German communist regime was dismantled. To avoid a complete financial collapse of the newly democratic East Germany, the two sides first established a monetary, economic and social union by the early summer of 1990. The political reunification was complete by October. The makeshift nature of the process is apparent from the legal mechanism used, Article 23 of the West German Basic Law, under which the new eastern German states joined the Federal Republic by fully adopting its laws and institutions. It sidestepped Article 146 of the Basic Law, which would have created a union between the two states under a new constitution, and would have entailed a more comprehensive evaluation of the East German institutions.
Source: The European Journal of Public Health - Category: General Medicine Source Type: research