E German towns 'left to poverty'
After two decades of promises to revitalise its former communist east, Germany has abandoned swathes of the ex-GDR to poverty and depopulation, a scathing new report has revealed.

The trend, which has seen hundreds of thousands flee westwards from the neglect, is so bad that the old communist east is now studded with "ghost towns", it says.

The report, released late last month and called the Future Atlas 2007, is the most detailed examination of 439 towns and regions in Germany, and shatters the pledges made almost 20 years ago.

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It reveals that investment worth hundreds of billions of pounds in selected eastern "hotspots" such as Dresden and Potsdam has helped resuscitate their once downtrodden economies.

But beyond these much publicised symbols of success, it says, is an economic desert where the concrete tenement blocks of communist times endure, but the communities, industries and jobs do not.