-- COMPARTIR -- (...) There is little change for the moment in Germany’s attitude toward its neighbors. While Greece, Italy, Spain and even France are hacking away at long-cherished parts of their social safety net to meet the demands of Berlin and their international creditors, Ms. Merkel, a conservative, and her unyielding finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, are resisting any sort of redistribution of funds within the euro zone. Berlin’s attention to its own domestic priorities seems likely to stir resentment that the medicine of austerity prescribed by Berlin abroad is administered with less zeal at home. Analysts say the contrast is angering voters throughout Europe, where populist and anti-European Union parties are steadily gaining strength outside Germany. From the German perspective, years of frugality and sacrifice have led to a strong economy, a full treasury and predicted budget surpluses to the end of Ms. Merkel’s next four-year term in 2017. What Berlin is demanding of its European partners, German officials are quick to say, is that they do much the same for themselves. “The Germans say to themselves, ‘We are a family, and the other Europeans are distant relatives,’ ” said Jürgen W. Falter, a professor of political science at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “In a family, you stand together; distant relatives, you help when you can.” It is a sentiment widely shared across the German political spectrum. Since Ms. Merkel rose in the ranks of the conservative Christian Democrats in the 1990s, she has already moved her party well to the left. That shift helped cement her election victory in September, when the results showed that Germans voters wanted center-left policies, BUT run by the nominally conservative chancellor. Reviving her partnership with the Social Democrats, with whom Ms. Merkel governed in her first term, from 2005 to 2009, implies a further shift to the left in a country where most people expect the state to assist in times of need, and the gap between rich and poor — while widening — is narrower than in the United States or even Britain. In this move, Ms. Merkel is being pushed by domestic pressures to adopt policies that would actually be welcomed by most economists, the United States Treasury and many leading European officials. They have long argued that Germany needs to balance growth in the euro zone by stimulating domestic demand and reducing its dependence on exports. For years, Ms. Merkel has rebutted that reasoning, saying each country has to keep its own fiscal house in order. But under pressure from domestic politics, she appears to be easing up (...)
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 20:43:19 +0000
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