Main focus of Thursday, March 18, 2010

Merkel wants possibility of excluding members from Eurozone

German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed on Wednesday that it should be possible to expel crisis-ridden member states from the Eurozone as a last resort. That would mean the end of the idea of Europe, writes the press.

Les Echos - France

With her proposal on excluding countries from the Eurozone German Chancellor Angela Merkel is going against the very idea of European unity, writes the business daily Les Echos: "Such a move would be a particularly violent act within a political construction that has been based for half a century on the desire to be part of a common enterprise. Of course the chancellor was not speaking to the European Parliament but to members of the German Bundestag, who are particularly opposed to Berlin's allocating support for Athens. Nevertheless her speech marks a decisive turn. The euro was meant to be a start. A common currency was to bring about a rapprochement in budget policies, but nothing has been undertaken since. And as economists have predicted, the large gap between monetary and budgetary levels is posing a vital problem in times of crisis. The question is on the table and there are only two possible answers: make progress or go bust." (18/03/2010)

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Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is encountering resistance from all sides to her proposal for excluding member states from the Eurozone, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung notes: "The Chancellor wasn't at her best with her idea - not to say threat - of 'expelling a country from the Eurozone as a last resort'. If you're going to deliberate that kind of thing in full public view you must at the same time make it clear whether the country is also to be excluded from the EU or whether it can remain as a member in distress with full voting rights, or be deprived of its right to make decisions. Was it not one of the original ideas of European unification to achieve a mutually supportive community in which the peoples of Europe share the same fate?" (18/03/2010)

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Eleftherotypia - Greece

With Germany's negative stance on financial aid for Greece Chancellor Angel Merkel really takes the biscuit for uncooperativeness, the left-liberal daily Eleftherotypia writes: "Berlin waits until Greece, bled dry by speculating lenders, is on the brink of the abyss and only then does Frau Merkel begin to take an interest in the fate of her unfortunate partner. So this is what a mutually supportive community looks like! ... Germany even wants those countries that are gripped by crisis to be pushed off the cliff, or in other words out of the Eurozone. However these, which demonstrate the gaping institutional void of democracy, will not serve to construct the union of states with equal rights envisaged by the forefathers of the European Union. Europe's peoples believed in this vision of a European family that acted jointly and in agreement. Have they perhaps been betrayed?" (17/03/2010)

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Corriere della Sera - Italy

The calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the option to exclude countries that refuse to reform and exceed deficit limits from the Eurozone are the wrong words at the wrong time, according to conservative daily Corriere della Sera: "Angela Merkel's declaration could conjure up new and worrying scenarios not just for Greece, but also for all Euroland. Even if the Chancellor's position appeared to mainly target public opinion and Germany's parliamentarians, coming in the midst of an international financial crisis that has also affected Germany's budget and its banks' balance sheets it is too harsh in both tone and timing. ... The Greece problem is per se a small and solvable problem. A Europe in which Germany renounced the key historical role it played in the formation of the European Community would be a far greater problem." (18/03/2010)

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