Worth noting that Germany was considered "the sick man of Europe" due to its poor growth and high unemployment from the middle of the nineties to a bit into the 2000s. Not sure that is the entire explanation of his problems, but is probably related.
The "recovery" out of that sickness is a bit fake, it's just because 18 other countries agreed to use German currency (a.k.a. the Euro) that Germany now is looking better than the rest of the continent: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/greece-...
It was more like "other countries (aka France) demanded the Germanies to join the Euro in order for them to reunite". No Euro, no reunification. The German people were really scared of joining weak currencies like the Lira and others, having gone through multiple hyperinflations historically and finally having a super solid and strong Mark. That is also why the ECB is a) independent of the member state goverments and b) in Frankfurt and not somewhere in France or Belgium like the other EU buildings are.
Not really. UBI would be. The effective marginal tax rate for poor people is pretty high. (The conventional taxes are low, but each extra Euro earned pre-tax cuts into welfare a lot. That incentive ain't great---especially since welfare is a very stable income once you have all the bureaucracy sorted, but the kinds of jobs poor people get are often less stable. Especially jarring if getting a job involves sunk costs like buying a car or moving to a different city.)
Funny enough, the Euro was a quid pro quo in return for French approval of unification. (The French were basically forced to copy the Bundesbank's monetary policy. Their politicians had hoped to meddle more with the ECB.)
