08 March 2013

Jürgen Trittin on Angela Merkel's European policy and the future of Europe

In an exclusive interview with Social Europe, the Chairman of the Green Parliamentary Group in the German Bundestag talked about what he would change in the German European policy approach.

The crisis is not, as Mrs Merkel wants us to believe, the result of excessive state debts, but is due to a crashed banking system that increased the level of debt of banks and private households. The fact that governments all over Europe had to bail out the ailing banking sector led to an increase of state debts. The second cause of the crisis are the economic imbalances between the Member States of the eurozone. Obviously, the Chancellor ignores these root causes of the crisis and rather continues to impose strict austerity policies.

I do believe that we need sound fiscal and budgetary policies throughout the EU Member States. However, the recession many EU Member States are facing and the alarming increase of unemployment rates in the southern and some eastern European states, especially among young people, show that austerity alone is the wrong way out of the crisis. We desperately need more investments in sustainable growth and education in order to create jobs and offer a perspective for young people in Europe. But the recent compromise on the long-term EU budget, pushed for by Mrs. Merkel, shows that the priority is again given to big agro businesses rather than to investments in growth and jobs. This is a worrying development and the wrong policy for the future of the EU. In the course of the negotiations on the European fiscal treaty we forced the government to impose a Financial Transaction Tax and increase investments. A new government in Germany would certainly stick to this approach: solving the debt crisis not by austerity measures but by an European tax pact that strengthens the income side of the state budgets and thus gives more room for investments in sustainable growth and education...

There is no way around it: we need to reduce the economic imbalances within the eurozone. This includes both deficit and surplus countries like Germany. 25 per cent of Germany’s export surplus was generated in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. So for years Germany has benefited from a policy of economic imbalances at the expense of deficit states that consequently had to face a downturn and in turn an increase of their state debt, which led to the current crisis. Solving the structural problems within the eurozone is therefore in Germany’s own best interest. It is important to strengthen the competitiveness in the deficit states and at the same time increase the domestic demand in Germany, for example by implementing a legal minimum wage. Germany is one of the last countries without a minimum wage in Europe. Furthermore, the EU needs to evolve into a real economic and monetary union. A common currency without strongly coordinated economic, financial and fiscal policies just won’t work. We have to reduce our state debts in Europe, impose strong regulation of the financial markets and establish a common, effective banking supervision as well as an European pact against tax evasion.

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