I have a nested dictionary stored in the variable nested_dict_variable. The dictionary is retrieved by using SPSS valueLabels Property (Python)

I am trying to convert this nested dictionary into a pandas DataFrame. Here is my code:

nested_dict_variable

nested_dict_manual = {
 0: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 1: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 2: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 3: {0.0: '0 - no', 1.0: '1 - yes'},
 4: {0.0: '0 - no', 1.0: '1 - yes'},
 5: {0.0: '0 - no', 1.0: '1 - yes'},
 6: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 7: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 8: {1.0: '1 - low', 2.0: '2', 3.0: '3', 4.0: '4', 5.0: '5 - high', 99.0: "99 - don't know"},
 9: {1.0: 'Germany'},
 10: {1.0: '1 - A', 2.0: '2 - B', 3.0: '3 - C'}
}


nested_dict = nested_dict_manual

# convert nested dictionary to Pandas DataFrame
data_list = []
for outer_key, inner_dict in nested_dict.items():
    for inner_key, value in inner_dict.items():
        data_list.append({'Outer Key': outer_key, 'Inner Key': inner_key, 'Value': value})

df = pd.DataFrame(data_list)

This works when I copy & paste the content of nested_dict_variable into nested_dict_manual and declare nested_dict = nested_dict_manual. The resulting DataFrame df looks like this:

However, if I declare nested_dict = nested_dict_variable I get an error message when running the code AttributeError: 'ValueLabel' object has no attribute 'items'

Why does the code work with the copy & paste dictionary but fails otherwise?