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Most Germans now agree with a sigh: if only we’d stuck to the Deutschmark! 57% of the population feel we’d have been better off never adopting the euro. And more than one third wish they could have their D-Mark back right now.
And they’re not only nostalgic die-hards. More and more coolly calculating Germans are joining the ranks of the eurosceptics: economists, executives, entrepreneurs. Volker Nitsch, a professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, who has researched the collapse of monetary unions, says, “I’d put the probability of a country opting out of the euro sometime soon at about 20%.”
While politicians are debating, at the outside, how many more rescue packages we can shoulder, the electorate is already way ahead of them. What’s missing in the debate is facts – and protagonists that can be taken seriously. Thus far only foreigners have dared to speculate publicly about the return of the D-Mark. US star economist Barry Eichengreen, for instance, recently said Germany is one of the few EU countries that could reintroduce its old currency without triggering a serious financial crisis on the home front. It is high time we put fear aside and soberly assessed our options. What would returning to the Mark entail?
***Read the full article on the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung site***
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