Europe: Blaming Germany for soaring unemployment

It was “like a declaration of war” against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Gerd Niewerth in the Westdeutsche Zeitung (Germany). An internal document from France’s ruling Socialist Party, leaked to the press this week, rails against Merkel’s “selfish intransigence” in insisting that euro zone countries adhere to rigid budget limits even as their unemployment rates skyrocket. This week France recorded its highest jobless rate of the century, at nearly 11 percent, while Spain tipped into Great Depression territory, with 27 percent unemployment. It’s no surprise that they seek a foreigner to blame, and Merkel is the obvious choice. “Populists on Left and Right alike want to convince their voters that she alone is responsible for the entire European economic crisis.”

Scapegoating Merkel is “not only childish, it is extremely dangerous,” said Le Monde (France) in an editorial. She’s not the one who got us into debt—we did that ourselves. For France to burn its bridges with Germany would destroy any chance to save the euro—indeed, the whole European project, said Pierre Rousselin in Le Figaro (France). It would be the “death of Europe.” French President François Hollande must abandon this “petty Machiavellian plot” to make the German chancellor lose her election in September.

Well, somebody has to stand up to Germany, said Jörg Bibow in El País (Spain). Austerity is simply not working—not in France, not in Greece, and certainly not in Spain. “It’s up to France now to convince its ally to finally accept this simple truth—or to put an end to the euro madness that has inflicted so much unnecessary suffering on millions of Europeans.” Spain can’t hold out much longer, said El Periódico de Catalunya (Spain). We have more than 6 million unemployed, most of them young, many of them hopeless, some of them even homeless. Some 2 million of them have been jobless for more than two years, struggling to stay alive on a dole of just $525 a month.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Merkel alone can turn this around—but not by abandoning German fiscal prudence, said Brendan Simms in the London Evening Standard (U.K.). Germany wants to see a grand United States of Europe, but it has erred in trying to bring that about incrementally, first with currency union, then budgetary tinkering, and finally political union and with it joint debt liability. But leaving that for last “will crush the southern and western periphery economically long before they reach the finishing line.” Only full economic and political union can save the euro. Merkel, as the strongest leader of the strongest state, must “call a constitutional convention” for Europe, and task representatives with creating an “Anglo-American-style constitutional union with a popularly elected executive president, an assembly elected by population, and a Senate representing the member states.” This body would then oversee the common debt. Will Merkel “be prepared to provide the leadership necessary” for such a historic task? asked Jeremy Warner in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). My guess is she would rather be known as the mother of the new Europe “than the alternative—the politician who impotently presides over Europe’s final disintegration.”