“Versailles without war.” Handelsblatt leads with a front page diatribe on Angela Merkel’s attitude towards the EU countries in trouble. The chief editor of the financial daily, Gabor Steingart, accuses the chancellor of inflicting on Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain sanctions comparable to those under the Versailles Treaty that put an end to the First World War – and paved the way for the Second.
And Steingart recalls US Secretary of State George Marshall’s speech in June 1947 offering a defeated Germany the aid needed to take its destiny in hand again. “We give the Americans credit for that, but we haven’t learned any lessons from it” – and now run the risk of turning Europe into “a place where the inhabitants loathe one another”.
Cutbacks equivalent to 13% of GDP are something no country has achieved in times of peace, points out Das Handelsblatt. “Applied to Germany, that would mean dispensing with family benefits, disbanding the Bundeswehr, reducing social security subsidies to zero – and doubling income taxes.”
“The 72 million Greeks, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese owe 1.5 trillion euros to European banks: that’s five times the German state budget,” raps out Gabor Steingart, foreseeing that “states in distress can scrimp and save to the point of self-strangulation, they won’t get rid of that millstone round their necks”. Lest her policy culminate – not in war – but in rampant social insecurity, Angela Merkel had better remember Versailles and the Marshall Plan, take a leaf out of that book, and bang the drum for direct investment in southern Europe.
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