Euro

Tag: Germany

  • 2013: A Year in the Crisis

    So here we are in 2014. As this edition of the Euro Crisis blog draws to a close, it is time to say farewell to the readers and greet the new contributors who will take over and comment on the Euro zone crisis as it develops from here on in. Farewells are also an appropriate…

  • US Treasury versus Germany: New Controversies, Old Debates

    You may have heard about the recent report by the US Treasury criticising Germany’s deflationary economic policies and their harmful effect on the global economy. And if so, you have probably also heard about the reaction that ensued on the part of the representatives of the German authorities, who retorted that there’s nothing wrong with…

  • Taking a Close Look at the Grand Coalition Talks: not so Grand on Europe?

    Berlin is heading towards a grand coalition between Chancellor Merkel’s CDU, her Bavarian sister party, the CSU, and the Social Democrats (SPD). After an election campaign in which European issues were strangely absent, surely the delegations that sat down a month after the elections had to get their teeth into Europe. By putting Europe on…

  • Parallel Currencies are no Alternative for the Euro

    Many are upset about the ‘TINA-type solutions’ for the euro crisis. ‘There-is-no-alternative’ (TINA) seems to have been an irrevocable characteristic of the euro right from the start. A sense of ‘having been forced onto the people’ was kindled by the fact that in most countries the single currency was adopted without referenda. Subsequently, many of…

  • Do the German elections matter?

    As journalists from across Europe flock to Germany to report on the federal elections this coming Sunday, the question that is asked by many is “Does their outcome matter for Europe?” There is no simple answer to this. Indeed the visions of the major parties on the future of the eurozone and the union as…

  • German Government Embraces Multi-Speed Europe

    It almost slipped off my radar in the summer break, which Berlin dived into at the end of June: the German government seems to change course on its stance towards a multi-speed Europe or, as analysts like to put it, differentiated integration. If this is really the case then here is some revolutionary news that…

  • German Federal Constitutional Court Chews on Role of European Central Bank

    Verdicts from Karlsruhe usually serve as pacifiers for the German public and, more recently, for the eurozone as a whole. Remember the ruling on the ESM and the Fiscal Compact, which the German Federal Constitutional Court concluded was reconcilable with the country’s basic law, or Grundgesetz, in September 2012. What a relief this announcement was…

  • Help the Bruised French out of the Corner!

    There has been a lot of bad news last week: the Eurozone is further contracting, France is moving into recession and the EU has been dramatically losing support all across Europe according to figures published in a Pew poll. Watching President Hollande’s Élysée address one year into his presidency one saw a cornered head of…

  • On Axes and Party Politics: the End of Europe’s Predictability

    In a commentary last year on the eve of the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty I wondered to what extent the notion of ‘the Franco-German axis’ was still a useful framework to analyse politics in Europe. I argued that in the course of the euro crisis, economic and monetary policies in…

  • Dijsselbloem or DijsselDoom – a Dutch Perspective

    I already presented my reservations against the appointment of Dutch Minister of Finance, Jeroen Dijsselbloem (Labour Party) as President of the Eurogroup. The public outrage following the bankruptcy of the banking sector in Cyprus has raised new questions concerning his ‘presidency’ (for which in Dutch the more modest ‘chairmanship’ is used). My initial doubts concerned…