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发帖数: 19471 | 1 Germans Reconsider Ties to Europe
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020413820457659864
By VANESSA FUHRMANS
BERGISCH GLADBACH, Germany—As Angela Merkel races to convince Germans that
their continued prosperity rests on preserving the euro, she is encountering
strong resistance even from those in her own party who have been
traditionally among the country's most pro-European politicians.
Enlarge Image
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Greek demonstrators protest austerity moves Wednesday.
When German lawmakers vote Thursday on whether to put more money into Europe
's bailout fund—a step many investors see as essential to prevent a market
panic—several conservative deputies, including Wolfgang Bosbach, a
prominent champion of European integration, are expected to vote "no." Mr.
Bosbach, a high-ranking conservative in Ms. Merkel's Christian Democratic
Union, has recently become an outspoken critic of the bailout strategy.
"The first medicine didn't work, and now we are simply doubling the dose,"
said the lanky Mr. Bosbach of the Greek debt crisis. "My fear is that when
the big bang happens, it won't just be us who will have to pay but
generations hereafter."
The lawmaker rebellion underscores a broader shift among Germans about their
nation's role in Europe since the crisis erupted nearly two years ago.
While the Thursday vote is expected to pass, and a vast majority of Germans
continue to feel a strong, historical commitment to Europe, with a common
currency as its anchor, many have grown doubtful of whether it's worth the
ever-growing cost of saving the euro.
Like many Europeans, few in Germany today fear the return of armed conflict
in Western Europe, the decades-long impetus behind what Germans still often
call the "European peace project."
Instead, economic prosperity and stability have become the main rationale
for monetary union, an argument many Germans say they have trouble
reconciling with one ineffective bailout after another.
Unable to persuade an increasingly skeptical German nation to go along with
more rescue measures, Ms. Merkel risks presiding over Germany's growing
isolation and the dissolution of the euro—the crowning achievement of
Europe's post-World War II drive toward integration.
Ms. Merkel, a 57-year-old trained physicist and a famously cautious
politician, is making a belated attempt to rekindle Germans' love affair
with the idea of European unity.
On Sunday, the normally interview-shy chancellor defended her euro rescue
efforts in an hour-long prime-time conversation on public television.
"We need the euro. The euro is good for us," Ms. Merkel said.
Germany's main opposition party has agreed to support the bailout, ensuring
its passage. Yet the growing backlash within Ms. Merkel's conservative base
suggests that her coalition will face strong internal headwinds in the
coming months if, as expected, Germany is asked to commit even more
resources to contain Europe's spiraling debt crisis.
Mr. Bosbach, a party veteran whose district runs along the eastern wooded
hills of the Rhineland—the cradle of Germany's decades-long engagement with
Europe—is at the vanguard of a movement against further bailouts.
Enlarge Image
Zuma Press
Wolfgang Bosbach, a longtime ally of Angela Merkel, has shifted to opposing
bailouts for countries such as Greece as their problems persist.
A longtime ally of the chancellor, Mr. Bosbach brought Ms. Merkel flowers in
June to congratulate her on receiving the U.S. Presidential Medal of
Freedom in Washington. Last year, Mr. Bosbach, affectionately called "Wobo"
by many colleagues and constituents, also threw his support behind the
initial European debt bailouts.
But after six decades of embracing and funding an integrated Europe, the pro
-European heart of Germany's ruling class is divided over how much further
to go to defend it.
"I don't want to be co-opted into an anti-euro movement—the EU is an
important political project," argues the 59-year-old Rhineland Catholic,
whose straight-talking manner and public battle with advanced prostate
cancer has won him friends across political lines. "But what we promised the
people was a union of stability, not a union of debt."
A poll for national German broadcaster ZDF earlier this month shows three-
quarters of Germans are against the expanded European rescue fund that's
subject to Thursday's vote.
"It's no longer some remote debate; it's about our daily lives and what will
happen to our savings, our economic standing," said Ria Borgmann, a retired
local government administrator while shopping on a recent afternoon in
Bergisch Gladbach, the heart of Mr. Bosbach's voter district.
While Ms. Borgmann, 64, said she typically votes left of the more
conservative Mr. Bosbach, she's found herself agreeing with his reasoning. "
I am very much for Europe, but at some point there's got to be a limit to
rescue packages."
The measures before German parliament today would nearly double the main
euro-zone's bailout fund's lending capacity to 40 billion ($595 billion)
and allow the fund to buy sovereign bonds in the open market.
Enlarge Image
Ever since the debt crisis began in Greece nearly two years ago, Ms. Merkel
and her party have agreed to bailouts of struggling euro members only
reluctantly. As the crisis has deepened, posing an existential threat to the
currency union, Ms. Merkel has come under fire for jeopardizing the legacy
of Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who built today's unified Germany as well as
the European Union.
Though Germany has played the euro-zone's fiscal task master, insisting on
painful austerity before opening its purse strings, there remains little
support for withdrawing from the common currency that underpins European
integration. Surveys show most Germans still see a united Europe as key to
ensuring prosperity and peace on a continent with a legacy of conflict.
Still, many fear they'll soon be forced to choose between watching the
common currency collapse and sacrificing their prized fiscal rigor to a
European super state that enables debt-ridden countries such as Italy and
Greece.
Germany's contribution to the new, expanded rescue loan package is 11
billion, still less than half the 00 billion it pledged to bail out its
banks in 2008. But many see the European Central Bank's moves to buy
billions of euros in low-grade government bonds of southern European
countries as another sign that European institutions are slipping away from
them.
Related Article
Europe Debates Expanded Rescue Options
Even more unpalatable is the prospect of making the euro zone collectively
liable for its members' debts, as a growing chorus of European officials
have recently urged. Many argue so-called euro bonds, which Ms. Merkel has
steadfastly opposed, are the bulwark to relieve financial pressure on debt-
ridden members and underpin the euro zone's full fiscal union.
But to Germans, it would mean relinquishing their hard-won low borrowing
rates to pay for the largess of more free-wheeling members.
"Ultimately the euro-bond issue will come to a head, and Ms. Merkel will
have an impossible dilemma," says one senior German coalition lawmaker. "If
she goes back to the German people with [euro bonds], she is out. If she
doesn't, she will be a very lonely person in Europe."
In Berlin and beyond, Mr. Bosbach's antibailout stance has resonated loudly.
Hundreds of letters in support have poured into his parliamentary office,
as have dozens of media requests. Back home on the streets of Bergisch
Gladbach, and other district towns, voters have rushed up to encourage him.
Mr. Bosbach's position, though, has put him at odds with the majority of his
coalition colleagues. One senior Christian Democrat said voters in other
districts now routinely ask him and other lawmakers why they don't oppose
the broader bailout fund like Mr. Bosbach. Another, the party's deputy
parliamentary chairman, Michael Fuchs, criticizes Mr. Bosbach for taking his
position too early in the rescue fund debate.
"Wolfgang Bosbach gets a lot of things right, but in this case he is plain
wrong," Mr. Fuchs says of his friend and colleague. "Early on, I had a
stomachache just thinking about a [bigger] rescue fund, but now I'm
satisfied," he says. "It's necessary to protect Germany."
Like many of his constituents, Mr. Bosbach's fiscal and political world view
was shaped by Germany's postwar years, as a newly minted deutsche mark
helped fuel the country's economic miracle. Born into a deeply Catholic
family, he grew up in woodsy hills east of Cologne and the Rhine Valley, the
same region as ex-chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Kohl and one particularly
scarred by 20th century conflict.
At home, religion and conservative politics dominated dinner conversations.
So did lessons in responsibility. As a child, Mr. Bosbach would collect
scrap paper around the neighborhood to deliver to the local paper mill.
"It wasn't for money, it was about showing responsibility," said Mr. Bosbach
, whose website lists two of his three favorite books as the Bible and
Germany's Constitution (the third is Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist").
Introduced to the Christian Democrats' local youth group at local soccer-
league matches, Mr. Bosbach began a career in municipal politics in his 20s
and, later, practiced law.
He eventually won election to Germany's national parliament in 1994,
climbing the party ranks as one of its top homeland security and interior
affairs experts. There, he was a backer of then-Chancellor Kohl's pursuit of
monetary union as a measure of Germany's commitment to a united Europe.
He has also been a staunch ally of Ms. Merkel. In 2004, he threw his weight
behind her chancellor candidacy, going against the tide of some fellow CDU
conservatives. She texted him between euro-crisis meetings last year to wish
him a speedy recovery while he was in the hospital after prostate surgery.
But after voting to ratify a Greek rescue package and initial euro-zone
bailout fund last year, Mr. Bosbach's doubts about the effort began to stack
up. First Portugal, then Ireland, Spain and Italy became ensnared in the
contagion. By spring, as Greece's economy seized up further and its debts
appeared even more unwieldy, he became convinced of the futility of bailouts.
Like many ordinary Germans, Mr. Bosbach objects to the reasoning that the
euro zone can only survive if a country as indebted as Greece is kept on
board. Instead, he argues, the currency bloc needs clear rules that let an
insolvent country exit, and can only achieve stability if they're reinforced
. "The issue isn't whether Greece wants to turn around, it's whether it can,
" he said.
Germany's political and business elite overwhelmingly oppose such a hard
line, arguing that cutting off aid now could cause the euro zone to unravel.
"No really good and fast solution exists," the chiefs of Germany's top
industry federations wrote in an open letter to parliament on Friday. "But
without an expanded European rescue fund, incalculable consequences threaten
the European Union and its common currency."
But in Mr. Bosbach's district and beyond, his views are gaining ground.
Horst Becker, founder and head of Isotec GmbH, a German building restoration
company with headquarters in Mr. Bosbach's voter district, has known Mr.
Bosbach since their days as young CDU activists. But in recent months he
found himself debating his old friend. "I'd say, 'Wobo, there is no
alternative to supporting Greece. How else can you stop a chain reaction?'"
Mr. Becker, 49, said.
In recent weeks, though, Mr. Becker said he's come to see rescuing Greece as
hopeless and bailouts only buying time. The final straw came early this
month when a team of euro-zone debt inspectors cut short a review in Athens
over disagreement with Greek officials over how to fill its budget-deficit
gap.
"I am for Germany supporting its neighbors, but they have to be able to do
their homework, too," he explained.
A big problem for the rest of the euro zone is that many ordinary Germans
say they don't see the tangible benefits of a common currency. The German
economy, which came roaring out of the global financial crisis, is Europe's
economic locomotive, but much of its growth and productivity gains have come
with entitlement trimming and wage restraint. Average people's wages have
stagnated over the past decade, even as exports and corporate profits have
boomed.
Meanwhile many, like 57-year-old Franz Dahlen of Bergisch Gladbach, worry
that the more Germany spends to rescue its less prudent neighbors the bigger
the cuts to Germany's already-pruned welfare state.
"There's no end in sight and so much in our own country that needs to be
restored and fixed," said Mr. Dahlen, a former salesman who now runs a
foster children program. "I wish Germany would look at its own challenges
more closely because otherwise soon we'll be poor."
—David Crawford and Marcus Walker contributed to this article.
Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at v**************[email protected] | w****k
发帖数: 10542 | 2 要相信女博士，OK
要相信物理系的女博士，OK
一个场论拿满分的女博士比一屋子的MBA加起来都强，OK
that
encountering
【在 v****e 的大作中提到】
: Germans Reconsider Ties to Europe
: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020413820457659864
: By VANESSA FUHRMANS
: BERGISCH GLADBACH, Germany—As Angela Merkel races to convince Germans that
: their continued prosperity rests on preserving the euro, she is encountering
: strong resistance even from those in her own party who have been
: traditionally among the country's most pro-European politicians.
: Enlarge Image
: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
: Greek demonstrators protest austerity moves Wednesday.
| Z****g
发帖数: 13731 | 3 兄弟都要分家，何况国家
that
encountering
【在 v****e 的大作中提到】
: Germans Reconsider Ties to Europe
: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020413820457659864
: By VANESSA FUHRMANS
: BERGISCH GLADBACH, Germany—As Angela Merkel races to convince Germans that
: their continued prosperity rests on preserving the euro, she is encountering
: strong resistance even from those in her own party who have been
: traditionally among the country's most pro-European politicians.
: Enlarge Image
: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
: Greek demonstrators protest austerity moves Wednesday.
| w****k
发帖数: 10542 | 4 说到底还是智商问题啊。
三个臭皮匠顶个诸葛亮那是胡扯蛋。
谁智商高，谁说了算啊。
【在 w****k 的大作中提到】
: 要相信女博士，OK
: 要相信物理系的女博士，OK
: 一个场论拿满分的女博士比一屋子的MBA加起来都强，OK
:
: that
: encountering
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