The Euro Crisis and German Primacy

Contributions to Political Economy, 2013

Highlighting that France and Germany held largely contradicting hopes and aspirations for Europe's common currency, this paper analyzes how the resulting euro contradiction conditioned the ongoing euro crisis as well as current strategies to resolve it. While Germany generally prevailed in hammering out the design of the euro policy regime, the German authorities have failed to see the inconsistency in their policy endeavors: the creation of a model whose workability presupposes that others behave differently cannot be made to work by forcing everyone to behave like Germany. This fundamental misunderstanding has made Germany the main culprit in the euro crisis, but it has yet to face the full consequences of its actions. Germany had sought every protection against the much-dreaded euro "transfer union," but its own conduct has made that very outcome inevitable. Conversely, having been disappointed in its own hopes for the euro, France is now facing the prospect of a lost generation-a prospect, shared with other debtor nations in the union, that has undermined the Franco-German alliance and may soon turn it into the ultimate euro battleground.

L'Europe en Formation, 2009

2014

This article delivers a contribution to the debate about the Euro crisis. With that purpose, our starting point shall be the book German Europe by the renowned sociologist Ulrich Beck. Analyzing the main ideas expressed in that book, we shall discuss more deeply the future perspectives of the European Union and its common currency, the Euro. In doing this, we shall consider different elements, in order to offer a complete overview of the situation: in particular, we will discuss economic, social and political themes. It will be interesting comparing Beck’s ideas with those of other important thinkers, especially with regard to themes such as the role of the EU in the world politics and the ways in which it could become a more democratic institution. A significant part of this work shall be dedicated to the predominant role of Germany and Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to Beck, she is the undiscussed leader of Europe, as with her peculiar political decisions and way of acting she influences and directs the functioning of European Union decisively.

Revista de Economia Política

The paper aims to establish interfaces between the Great Depression of the 1930s under the Gold Standard and the recent European Crisis under the Euro. It is argued that, despite their specificities, both crises revealed the potentially harmful effects, in economic and social terms, of institutional arrangements that considerably reduce the autonomy of monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies of participating countries, without being accompanied by increased cooperation between them, which should be led by a global (in the case of the Great Depression) or regional (in the case of the European Crisis) hegemonic power, which is not only capable of, but is also willing to act as a buyer and lender of last resort, especially in circumstances characterized by increased uncertainty, the deterioration of the general state of expectations and increased liquidity preference. In fact, central European countries in the past and peripheral European countries nowadays were effectively pushed ...

Jens Adam et al., Europa dezentrieren. Frankfurt: Campus, 2019

The mistakes that led to the euro crisis are irreversible and fatal. The author was convinced in 2009/10, as were many commentators, that the euro would collapse under the weight of its contradictions. It did not because the European Central Bank, strongly supported by Germany, sacrificed the European economy to save the currency. Greece was crushed in 2015 pour encourager les autres. None of the basic problems have been addressed: the permanent deflationary bias, the German export surplus, the absence of appropriate fiscal institutions, political protection of French and German banks, the crippling division between North and South Europe. The truth is that national currencies were replaced by a single currency when the world was moving back to plural monetary instruments. There is no way that a single currency can meet the needs of over 300 million people living under such diverse circumstances. The crisis has been postponed, but not resolved. The Americans fought a civil war in order to unify their currency; the Europeans hoped that economic centralization would lead to political union. They got it the wrong way round. The paper reviews the specific history of the euro while drawing on critical commentary made by the author in 2002. This is not a financial crisis of credit and debt, but an episode in the history of money shaped by the collapse of national capitalism under pressure from a money circuit that is both global and lawless. The argument considers work by Smith, Polanyi, Mauss, Marx and Simmel and asks how money might be approached from a perspective of human economy.

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2002

... Without stable exchange rates, the CAP was threatened and that threatened Franco– Germanrelations. ... This system led to tensions in Franco–German relations from the onset of the EMS. The French franc came under devaluation pressure from the start. ...

2015

The European Currency Crisis The catalyst for the September currency crisis in Europe was the tension over the stance of monetary policy in Germany and other countries in the European Monetary System (EMS), the arrangement that limits exchange rate fluctuations among members. High German interest rates were blamed for limiting the prospects for an economic recovery in Europe by forcing other members to keep their own rates high in order to maintain the value of their currencies against the German mark. Market speculation against the parities set by the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the EMS has resulted in the devaluation of several currencies against the mark, as well as the withdrawal of the United Kingdom and Italy from the ERM. These developments have raised new questions about the current direction of German monetary policy, the future of the EMS, and the prospects of a European monetary union. This Weekly Letter reviews and interprets these developments.