GERMANY looks set to reach the 25th anniversary of reunification on October 3 in high international standing after recent acts of personal and governmental generosity towards Syrian refugees. While the UK grudgingly announced it would accept 20,000 refugees over the next five years, Germany and Austria immediately and unequivocally opened their borders. Pictures of German folk singing, applauding and shaking hands with exhausted families at the main station in Berlin raised hopes of a happy ending for some refugees and shattered the stereotype of uncaring Germans that has endured – in Britain at least – since the last war.

That stereotype reared its head again just eight weeks ago when Angela Merkel led the rest of the “Troika” to deny debt relief to the stricken Greeks – prompting a storm of criticism from other small countries and calls for a rethink about EU membership among pro-European, independence-supporting Scots.

Now though, the Greeks problems have been overshadowed by the life or death struggle faced by refugees crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded dinghies and crossing borders in sealed truck containers. The discovery of 71 suffocated refugees in a truck near the Austrian border and the washed-up body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi triggered a massive humanitarian response across the world. But while Scots have had to rely on voluntary networks to express solidarity, German people have been able to do so much more. Because their government has stepped up to the plate and pledged to take 800,000 refugees this year and 500,000 annually for several years.

Without pressing all the stereotype buttons at once, the question immediately poses itself – why are Germans and their conservative Chancellor suddenly such model humanitarians?

The brief answer – Germany faces population decline and a severe labour shortage.

A recent study suggested the country’s workforce could shrink by six million before 2030, while numbers in neighbouring Poland, France and indeed Britain are growing. Germany’s birth rate has collapsed to the lowest level in the world and will plunge faster than Japan’s by 2020, according to the Hamburg Institute for International Economics. It found “no other industrial country is deteriorating at this speed despite the strong influx of young migrant workers.” Indeed the German government itself expects the population to shrink from 81 million to 67 million by 2060 as depressed parts of former East Germany go into “decline spirals” where doctors’ practices, shops and public transport shut down and cause even more people to leave.

Why the population collapse?

According to Michaela Kreyenfeld of the Max Planck Institute for demographic research: “Women are perfectly integrated within Germany’s labour market but when it comes to babies everyone expects a mother to stay at home and take care of the children. This of course deters women from becoming mothers.”

In 2006, Angela Merkel introduced relatively generous child benefit but in 2012 she backed a Bill giving parents an allowance to keep their toddlers at home rather than send them to nursery. A mixed message at best.

According to George Friedman in Forbes magazine though, it could be part of more deep-seated problem: “In a mature society, the economic value of children declines. Children turn from instruments of production into objects of massive consumption.” Certainly Sweden, with much better childcare and the second-highest rate of immigration after Germany, has better population projections. But it also fails to reach the long-term replacement rate of 2.1 children. Most of Europe will have demographic problems. Germany’s trying to deal with it.

None of this means their welcome for refugees has been phoney. Berlin is perhaps Europe’s most cosmopolitan city– during the Cold War it became home to thousands of green/socialist-leaning young people who escaped conscription by agreeing to settle in a city surrounded by the Soviet East but regarded as its capital-in-waiting by the federal West. Modern Berliners know about the hardships of war, division and displacement. More than that, they also have the capacity to act out of enlightened self-interest, supporting what’s good for the long-term health of their country not just what appeals to their worst fears or personal short-term interests. And that’s no small thing.

Thanks to the German ability to take the longer view, the refugee influx will boost their economy. Ten thousand new civil service jobs and 3,000 new police posts will be created to process asylum applications. Much of the extra £4.4 billion just released by the federal government will boost the construction sector by building new homes and finding jobs for the new arrivals. And many of them are skilled workers with tenacity, courage and determination – the kind of newcomers any country should be delighted to have. All of this amounts to a shot in the arm for the German economy – while the UK Government continues to be as miserly and short-sighted towards refugees as it is towards its ain folk.

And of course, German society will be transformed by its new citizens – as Angela Merkel has already predicted, accepted and welcomed.

Their government is making the most of a crisis. Ours is turning away.

Shameful – and short sighted.