The most disagreeable aspect of the polemic and divergences surrounding the European response to the financial and economic crisis is perhaps the accusations of egotism levelled against Germany, which would appear to have lost the European sprit that previously characterised the country. I believe these grievances to be unjustified. It is quite normal that the positions taken by member states to tackle the crisis are not all the same because the situation is different in each of them. It has been admitted that a European plan is in practice impossible and would not be effective. Efforts are focusing on the coordination of national plans so that they do not contradict each other. They also aim to ensure that action in one member state does not negatively impact on any of the others and that the functioning of the single European market is not disrupted. The EU's role - coordination and monitoring - is, nonetheless, essential; it is performing this role and it will be at the heart of the informal summit on 1st March (see yesterday's column).
Germany did its duty. The criticism against Germany effectively targets one partial and specific aspect: the release, proposed by the European Commission, of €5bn from the Community budget as part of the EU's two-year anti-crisis plan. It has been underlined that compared with national responses, this amount is pretty insignificant. This is a simplistic affirmation that ignores an essential factor: the
€5 billion from European funds will be money made available for concrete projects, whereas the astronomical amounts from national coffers are to a large extent guarantees or loans that beneficiaries will have to pay back with interest to the different states, or stakes taken out by governments that they will sell off at a later date (at a possible profit, as proved in certain previous examples).
What Germany refused, however (and Germany was not an isolated case), was the total unblocking of the €5bn, without having a prior discussion about where exactly the money would go. The tone in which the German minister of finance expressed his “no way”¸ was unpleasant at times, if not arrogant and sarcastic, as this column did not hesitate to point out. The minister was not, however, really wrong when it comes down to it. As the main contributor to the Community budget, Germany would have been funding the lack of member states' discipline ability or willingness to straighten out their public funding during the good times. The Commission subsequently indicated the projects of European interest that would be funded by the €5bn in question and we could not fail to notice that Germany was not alone it defending national interests: several member states said that projects that involved them should be taken into greater consideration. The dossier is still subject to discussion. The Member states and pundits that were so quick to denounce so-called German egotism should not forget that Germany is the only big country in the eurozone to have implemented a genuine effort at getting its budgetary housekeeping in order and that it represents the pillar of the Euro's stability and the source of the international financial community's trust in the European currency.
Reciprocal interests. A stable euro and a single market that works is indeed a reciprocal interest: the EU needs Germany and Germany needs the EU because its prosperity is to a large extent based on exports, and the main outlet of these exports is the European market. In the absence of the euro, the great majority of EU currencies would have undergone devaluations and the hypothetical national currency of Germany would have been re-valued, with its exports suffering as a result. A few wild nationalistic imaginings do not mean anything. The little game of identifying any difference between France and Germany as proof that the previous entente has been transformed into a permanent division is more indicative of sensation-seeking than an attempt to understand things. France and Germany's interests do not always coincide and this works very well. In an EU with 27 or more member states, the European interest is not defined by two. Community mechanisms have to work but the Franco-German couple remains fundamental; it is in everybody's interest that it continues and in whatever way it is tested, this couple will still be able to reconstruct itself. History proves that when France and Germany act together, Europe benefits. It will not be Berlin or Paris that will be propagating the kind of Euro-sceptic poison that could destroy or distort a European construction that represents the most positive kind of international evolution ever experienced in the world over recent centuries. (F.R./transl.rh)