Within the Eurozone, Germany is coming under increasing pressure to approve and adopt policies designed to stimulate the Eurozone economy. This is because Germany is the largest economy in the Eurozone, since the global financial crisis, Germany has enjoyed the strongest performance within the Eurozone based mainly on exports, which has led to a very substantial trade surplus, German public finances are in a very healthy state compared with most in the Eurozone and they are rich and have the policy flexibility to act.
Many in the rest of Europe are calling on the German government to launch a large debt-financed fiscal boost through public investment spending, creating, it is hoped, jobs and demand throughout the Eurozone. The Germans are resisting this strongly because they have worked very hard in recent years to get their government finances back onto a solid footing, and are expected to get close to a balanced budget in 2014. German politicians are stoutly resisting European calls for them to spend more and move back into deficit.
It is though in monetary policy where the greater controversy is being generated. Through his public utterances over the last six months, Mario Draghi has sought, to maintain market confidence by positioning the ECB as about to introduce a US- or UK-style QE programme in its efforts to boost demand and inflation. However the actual policy steps agreed at ECB meetings have not lived up his words – QE is always just a few months away. It is clear that, behind the scenes, the Bundesbank and several ECB members are fiercely opposed to such a policy, with many in Germany believing it to be illegal. They are angry at the way that Draghi has sought to bounce them into such a policy by his public statements.
To many in Europe (and indeed the world), the Germans are the bad guys, doggedly blocking any moves to boost the moribund Eurozone economy due to their particular economic ideological fixations around sound government finances, conservative monetary policy and a strong currency. Being so out of step with their Western allies is not a position in which post-war German governments have wished to find themselves, and in any other field than economic policy, they would have made adjustments to their position and found a compromise.
It should however be recalled that Germany never asked for the single currency, and when it became inevitable, did their best to restrict membership only to those economies that were happy to embrace German economic orthodoxies, for precisely the reasons that are now being played out within the Eurozone.
In 1990, Mitterand’s price for accepting the re-unification of Germany was monetary union. In permitting Germany to become a much larger, and thus more powerful nation, he sought to maintain France’s significance by sharing the all-powerful Deutschemark. Kohl accepted this provided that all those involved in monetary union were prepared to manage their economies according to German orthodoxy. Thus the ECB’s mandate was constructed along very similar lines to that of the Bundesbank – very independent of politicians, with a mandate of low inflation delivered through conservative monetary policy.
Similarly, the Maastricht Treaty constrained the size of government deficits and public debt that individual countries would be permitted. With these in place, the only economic solution for countries finding themselves in economic difficulties is for export-led growth, with the private sector becoming more competitive in global markets through cost control, innovation and structural reform.
There would be no room for short-term fixes generated by lower interest rates, weaker currencies and debt-financed government spending.
The criteria for membership of the euro were deliberately designed to exclude what are now known as the peripheral economies. Only the “core” European economies were expected to qualify, who understood and were prepared to accept German economic thinking. However everyone wanted to qualify and through a combination of the long economic boom of the 1990s and some very creative accounting, the euro began life both with many more members than Germany had ever intended, and with much weaker (though disguised) public finances than Germany would have countenanced.
Since 2008, the Germans have continued to espouse the policies that they believe were written into the monetary union. Thus they expect countries to embrace public sector austerity to reduce budget deficits and bring their giddy debt levels back under control, they expect their Central Bank to adhere to policies of sound money by control of money supply growth and they have a particular fear of Central Banks who buy government debt with newly-printed money. This is the economic and monetary union Germany insisted on, signed up to and has always believed that others had agreed to.
To date they have not relented on these principles, but it is leading to great pain and bad will across Europe, where the peripheral economies which previously resorted to policies of devaluation and government spending to boost their economies in times of trouble, cannot understand why these should not be adopted now. Germany now faces its greatest dilemma – whether to abandon the economic principles which have been the foundation of its economic success since 1945 and remain on good terms with the rest of Europe, or, remain true to its economic ideals and be the cause of the break-up of the monetary union as weaker economies are forced to leave.
In 2012, Angela Merkel opted to bail out Greece rather than risk the break-up of the euro, though by all accounts the decision was close and arrived at only after months of consideration. When the ECB finally votes to adopt QE (almost certainly sometime in early 2015), there will be vigorous opposition within Germany including legal challenges. Once again Mrs Merkel’s leadership will be key in determining the future for Germany and for Europe.
