In an attempt to alleviate the shortage, the Arbeitgeberverband Pflege, a health employer's union in Berlin, has come up with an idea -- enlisting nurses from China.
After their summit in Berlin, European Union leaders claimed to have reached a deal that would reorganise the union's finances in order to accommodate newcomers from Central and Eastern Europe.
Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin.
In the mid-1990s, an early Ostalgie-retailer, mondosarts.com, fought plans to reshape him to comply with European Union standards, winning him a reprieve in east Berlin and the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
All of a sudden, though, Berlin is abuzz with talk of remaking the European Union: issuing joint Eurobonds, renegotiating the EU's treaties, even creating a federal Europe.
Berlin's aim is to perfect the monetary union by ensuring countries adhere to rules designed to prevent future crises by addressing what are seen as the causes of the current one: government overspending and excessive risk-taking by banks.
Senior figures in Berlin are less sanguine about other bits of the European Union, fearing that their problems with competitiveness will look still more serious when this crisis is over.
These changes can be traced to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, events that forever altered America's role in Europe and the world.
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Even without the fall of the Berlin Wall, and under Mikhail Gorbachev's new management, the Soviet Union would have struggled in vain (Russia struggles still) to adapt this behemoth to the information age and the microchip.
In a meeting with industry leaders in Berlin on Tuesday, Merkel effectively waded into what is already an escalating battle with the European Union over its plans to enforce huge cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
Ironically, it is Germany which forced through the pact, which was seen as an integral part of monetary union but was meant to impose a straitjacket on potentially irresponsible countries like Italy, not the government in Berlin.
The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and within a year, dramatic changes occurred in the Soviet Union.
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