German government and union officials gather on Thursday in the baroque town of Potsdam outside Berlin to start wage negotiations for the country’s 1.3m civil servants, kicking off what the head of the country’s largest trade union predicted would be a year of “mega-wage deals”.

After years of wage stagnation in Europe’s biggest economy, calls for substantial pay increases are growing louder – and prompting warnings from economists about the potential impact on jobs and inflation.