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, the largest net payer, made in 2012 a net contribution of about €11.95 billion; France (second largest payer) made a net contribution of €8.30 billion, and the UK (third largest) €7.37 billion ( www.bpb.de ). Box 10.1 Germany and the Eurozone crisis When the proposal was made that member-states of the EU should move to a common currency (the euro), both elite and mass opinion in Germany were favourable, even though the Deutschmark had a very strong symbolic status for the Germans, and was the strongest major currency in the EU. Germany clearly had an interest
the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, who declared in 2012 that he would do ‘whatever it takes’ to defend the euro and began a programme of quantitative easing to keep interest rates low. Hollande counted some European successes. He was the driving force behind imposing the European Banking Union upon a reluctant Germany. His key aim was to speed up the establishment of the new banking regime, conferring upon the ECB the overall regulatory authority of the euro-zone's banks and allowing ECB support for threatened banks (which might
would imagine that considerable resistance might arise’. 87 But it would only be after the imbalances between members led to a steep crisis that a powerful critique of the decision to repudiate the Deutschmark would occur (perhaps the best-selling 2012 book by Thilo Sarrazin, Europa braucht den Europa nicht (Europe doesn’t need the Euro) marks the start of the new phase). By this point, it was clear that the eurozone members still continued to pursue their own economic interests and had yet to switch to adopting a pan-European economic outlook. The limits of
was not present at the Treaty of Rome commemorations – or rather it was conspicuous by its absence. For sure, there were the official celebrations, including a Declaration, a white paper on the future of the EU and some sombre speeches from heads of state and government. But the ghost at the banquet was Brexit. If there had been a growing sense of distance between citizens and the European project in its forties, and the Eurozone and migration crises had not been bad enough in its fifties, Brexit really was la cerise sur le gâteau as the EU turned sixty
the European Parliament elections in 2014, is the Alternative f ü r Deutschland (Alternative for Germany: AfD). This party was only formed some months before the 2013 Bundestag election, and focused very much on the policy of German withdrawal from the Eurozone and the return of the Deutschmark. Following the Eurozone crises concerning the Mediterranean countries, and Germany’s role in having to support the euro (see Chapter 10 ), the new party soon had support in opinion surveys which suggested that it could exceed the 5 per cent requirement for seats in the
December 2007. The decade of economic crisis that began almost immediately afterwards exposed big structural problems in the eurozone, which were mitigated but not rectified, set off waves of populist discontent that took both ultra-left and ultra-right-wing forms and created crises of governance in many EU countries (Bouin 2018 ). A structural migration crisis across Europe added to these pressures, particularly in the southern member states. New barriers went up everywhere and Europe had about the same length of
We are clearly confronted with a tension within the system, the dilemma of being a monetary union and not a fully-fledged economic and political union. The tension has been there since the single currency was created. However, the general public was not really made aware of it. 1 Herman von Rompuy, 26 May 2010 The President of the European Council delivered these remarks when the seriousness of the financial crisis that first revealed itself in Greece became evident across the rest of the eurozone. He was, no doubt reluctantly, drawing attention to
‘third world’ causes). The oil crises in the 1970s, global recession in the 1980s, the high costs of reunification in the 1990s and pressures of globalisation since then have all damaged the image of the German economy as a model for other countries. The crises in the Eurozone have affected Germany’s own prosperity and its ability simultaneously to preserve its leadership role in the EU whilst at the same time adhering to its own tenets of strict financial discipline, associated previously with the role of the Bundesbank (see also Chapter 10 ). At times, extreme
and political instability: fewer Muslims, fewer terrorists. In Marine Le Pen’s 2017 campaign, she warned of “two totalitarianisms”: globalization and Islamism. 7 A short list of her anti-globalist policies is: leave the EU, Eurozone and Schengen Area; restore French “sovereignty”; reduce immigration to 10,000 per year and carry out mass deportations; hire 15,000 new federal police officers; raise taxes on imports; lower domestic taxes; leave NATO’s integrated command; limit free education to French citizens only; reassert “French cultural identity.” Her campaign
Parliament election in 2014, as well as in Land elections) with its overwhelming emphasis on German withdrawal from the Eurozone, could be classified as a single-issue party, though its programme did raise other issues as well, such as energy policy and family policy. Even those voters sympathetic to the aims of such single-issue parties prefer to use their vote to support one of the larger parties, with more extensive programmes, nor do voters want to waste their votes on parties with no likelihood of securing 5 per cent of the vote and thus of winning seats in the