Massimo Faggioli - 19/06/2012

     The fact that Greece and France went to the polls on the same day, the 17th June, add further uncertainty to Germany’s position, which is being summoned both in Europe and the United States concerning the austerity policies imposed by the Merkel government to emerge from the financial, fiscal and economic crisis. But also in Germany there is a febrile debate within the political scenario, with a series of stances that are not all in Chancellor Merkel’s favour: all the more so because the German political scene is moving, especially after the regional elections in North-Rein Westphalia that have shown up the Chancellor’s weaknesses, the very serious crisis of the radical Left of Die Linke and the possible, upcoming debut on the national scene of the “Pirates.”

     Conservative-leaning newspapers close to the economic and financial establishment like Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt have preserved a line of firm support to the Chancellor and to the austerity policies. Die Welt has complained over the path followed by Greece over the past two years, noting that the now bitter medicine for the Greek people would have been less bitter in 2010. As regards the relations with France, Die Welt has followed the critique against the new French President Hollande and the proposal of the Euro-bonds, warning that this measure might erode the confidence of the markets in the European markets forever.

     On its side, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has continued to push for a respect of the treaties and to distance Germany from the vicious circle of the “false solidarity” that would make it “drown in debts, distancing even more its own citizens from the pro-European ideal.” In a forecast as to what could happen following the Greek elections on 17th June, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung underlined bow the failure of the attempt to form a Greek government or the victory of a party that intends to subtract Greece from its commitments “would bring the country’s departure from the Euro zone much closer. Instead, a crisis threat would continue to weigh upon the EU for years to come.”

     Moving to the Centre, Süddeutsche Zeitung has maintained a much less tough line towards Greece, without however missing out on the chance to report with alarming tones on the total block of the structural reforms in Greece in this period of non-stop electoral campaigning. At the same time, Süddeutsche Zeitung has criticised Hollande’s Euro-bond proposal, which does not more than just add uncertainty to what has already been produced by the elections in Greece. Surprisingly, the critical voices towards the austerity policies imposed by the Merkel government come from the economic and financial press along with the radical Left.

     The Financial Times Deutschland has on several occasions criticised the choice of austerity and the measures towards Greece, warning that this choice could soon turn out to be a serious risk for Germany itself, and hoping for growth programmes for the countries at risk. The Left-leaning newspaper Die Tageszeitung instead warned against the “normality” with which the hypothesis of a Greek Euro exit is contemplated. The problem us that “someone at a certain point will have to decide that Greece no longer belongs in the Euro zone. But who will do so? The Greeks want to stay in the Euro, and so someone else will have to show Greece the door.

     But this is technically impossible, owing to the EU treaties, and it is politically too hard.” Similar criticism of the German austerity and its effects on the relations between Germany and the other countries come from Berliner Zeitung. The elections in Greece have offered the chance to the German press for long retrospectives on the history of the Euro. On the errors of design at the origins of the project and on the errors of the past two years. But the true spectre that has haunted Germany on the occasion of the Greek elections in June is the Syriza party.

     Treated in a friendly way by the German radical Left as well as by the Left-wing press (such as the Frankfurter Rundschau), Syriza has been branded by Die Welt as the party heir to the family-based nanny-state and the economic newspaper Handelsblatt as the end of the European attempts to keep Greece in the Euro. Even in Germany there is no lack of critical voices towards austerity, but the prevalent approach on the German press is that of an imminent disaster, to which Germany can only get ready without being able to do anything to prevent it by now. This does not come as a surprise in a country where the same newspapers that today take for granted the Greek Euro exit, already at the start of the crisis, two years ago, were getting ready for this scenario.

     But it is striking to see how scarce and marginal the analyses are on the political, geopolitical and cultural costs of Greece’s exit from the Euro and on the effects for the whole continent of the impoverishment at underdevelopment levels of a symbolic country in terms of European identity. The victory of the conservative in the elections on the 17th June has given some relief to the German pro-Europeans, without however moving the front of the guarantors of austerity all that much. Almost like an anticipation of the Greek vote, on Sunday 17th June FAZ hosted an editorial by Thilo Sarrazin (former economist, who rose to fame for his 2010 book characterised by xenophobic overtones “Germany that self-destructs”), which invited the Germans to reject, seventy years after the Second World War, the moral blackmail that comes from other countries, and from the British in particular.

Massimo Faggioli
(University of St. Thomas – USA)