According to non-conformist economist James K. Galbraith, the “politics of creditors”, which consistently hits the most vulnerable eurozone countries and, still more widely, the most vulnerable European citizens, is nothing more than the “politics of bailiffs” (see Les Inrocks of 29 May). This comment could almost make one smile if, in his latest book (“And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” - see European Library no 1139 of 18 May), his friend Yannis Varoufakis, the erudite “Bad” guy, had not resurrected the comment that Bertolt Brecht put in the mouth of one of the characters in his “Threepenny Novel”: “Brute force is out of date - why send out murderers when one can employ bailiffs?” That the now departed troika may be likened to a band of bailiffs or, worse still, a squad of undertakers nowadays really only shocks those whose horizons do not extend beyond the Schuman Roundabout or the corridors of power in various capitals.
One key question remains, however: who stands to gain from the crime? Germany, of course, admits the “Good” Jacques Delors in his book of interviews with journalist Cécile Amar (“The Man Who Did Not Want To Be King” - see European Library no 1140 of 24 May). Germany, which “has benefitted from the euro zone because, no evaluation having been made, it has been able to export just as it pleased”. In reality, it is the product of carefully planned and methodically executed manoeuvring over decades, Varoufakis alleges. In his sights is the Bundesbank which, if he is to be believed, has long been a centre of power which no one and nothing in Germany can stand up to. Not even a chancellor: did the Frankfurt-based bank not have the hide of Chancellor Erhard in 1966, for the crime of listening to US leaders who were looking to stabilise the Bretton Woods system, rather than backing the bank's permanent, obsessive “crusade” against rising domestic prices? Chancellor Helmut Schmidt met President Giscard d'Estaing in the cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle on 15 September 1978 to seal the bilateral agreement that would bring the European monetary system into being. Is Yanis Varoufakis lying when he asserts that Mr Schmidt kept the Bundesbank and his own cabinet in the dark for fear that his plans would be sabotaged by an institution prepared to fight to the death to maintain its authority over the Deutschmark?
Clearly, there is no need to look further: that's where the “German fundamentalists” that Delors speaks about are to be found. Even more than in Berlin, where, perhaps, Wolfgang Schäuble is playing a role written by others because, in reality, the Bundesbank has won the day on the European monetary “front” as well. Has it not successfully imposed the charter that has forced the European Central Bank (ECB) into a straitjacket? Do we not have the Bundesbank to thank for the ECB's refusal, cast in the tablets of the treaties, to come to the aid of states encountering financial difficulty on the pretext that common debt would merely encourage more self-indulgence from the cicadas? In substance, Yanis Varoufakis alleges that, as it is, Germany, dancing to the tune of a Bundesbank blinded by its own dogma, is managing, through the fate that it is reserving for Greece with the compliant assistance of members of a “Deutschmark zone” rebranded under a new name, to insult its own past - Germany which, after the Second World War, had the Americans to thank for a massive reduction in its debt.
If the economic and monetary union is skewed in this way, then this is a major flaw since what is good for Germany is not automatically good for the whole of the euro zone. How, then, could France under President Mitterrand agree to such a pig in a poke? Quite simply because, already under General De Gaulle, Paris hoped to hide the power of the mark by agreeing to a common currency which would better reflect French reality and concerns. According to Varoufakis, François Mitterrand agreed to put the cart before the horse, believing that a large pothole in the road taken by the euro would sooner or later lead his successors and peers to take the leap towards political union in order to save the common currency. Unfortunately, those who have come after Mitterrand and Kohl have been particularly weak, observes the former Greek finance minister bitterly. On this occasion, Delors has chosen to be more blunt, his conscience dictating this vitriolic attack: “The French are allergic to transfers of sovereignty. They would prefer to be in the hands of Commission accountants that in those of a supranational power”.
What lesson can be drawn from this worrisome trilogy? It is simple: has Jean Monnet not been betrayed by European leaders, who, since the start of the 1980s, have been beavering away, from one summit to the next, laboriously trying to bring states together rather than giving their fellow citizens, European citizens, the desire and the means to unite in a completed, protective European Union? And if they continue along this course, are they not running the risk of being remembered as the ones who dug the graves of a European dream that was beginning to take shape?
Michel Theys