The Greeks are one of the most laid back and happy cultures on earth and the Germans are known to be one of the most up tight ones, much like the Japanese, which are followed by the English and the Americans in this Uptightness. So, you can see the dynamics between the Greek Culture and the German culture as being sort of like a paradox where both can learn a lot from each other. It is my hope that this happens to some degree benefiting both cultures.
Greek Debt Crisis Pits Greeks Against Germans
| New York Times | - |
BERLIN
- If the scramble to hold together Europe's single currency has
highlighted one thing, it is that national mind-sets can be more
stubborn than the 60-year-old mantra of the Continent's “ever closer
union” once supposed.
BERLIN
— If the scramble to hold together Europe’s single currency has
highlighted one thing, it is that national mind-sets can be more
stubborn than the 60-year-old mantra of the Continent’s “ever closer
union” once supposed. And no national psyche is more important to the
outcome at this moment than Germany’s.
In insisting that Greece
can stay in the euro only if everyone sticks to the rules, Germany has
acted almost classically to stereotype. Its fondness for orderly
procedure — the foundation of its post-1945 democracy — has prevailed
even over its desire to lead 21st century Europe.
As
eurozone finance ministers gather once more in Brussels on Saturday,
Germany is by no means the only country with reservations about
extending negotiations to keep Greece and its banks afloat. But as
Europe’s de facto leader, Germany has been the most visible and
influential, its penchant for process standing in sharp contrast to the
chaotic sequence of decisions and reversals emanating from Athens.
Timeline: Greek Debt Crisis
- December 2009 Credit ratings agencies downgrade Greece on fears that it could default on its debt.
- May 2010 Europe and Greece reach a $146 billion rescue package, conditional on austerity measures. Some economists say the required cuts could kill the patient.
- October 2011 Banks agree to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt.
- January 2015 Greek voters choose an anti-austerity party. Alexis Tsipras becomes prime minister.
- May 2015 Greece quells fears of an imminent default, authorizing a big loan payment to the I.M.F.
- June 2015 Greece defers a series of debt payments until the end of the month.
Many
Greeks have taken Germany’s resistance personally, plastering walls
with posters and graffiti denouncing what they see as the rigidity of
Chancellor Angela Merkel
and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble. After stepping aside as
the Greek finance minister last week, Yanis Varoufakis also took a
parting shot, writing in The Guardian that the Germans were out to destroy his country in the name of keeping to the rules.
Those
questioning the Germans’ obsession with rules have only to look at what
Berlin calls “the black zero,” meaning a balanced budget. After the
2008 global financial crisis, German lawmakers amended their
Constitution to ensure that future governments would not take on excess
debt of more than 0.35 percent of gross domestic product.
What
many outsiders view as the rigidity of Ms. Merkel and Mr. Schäuble is
widely viewed within the country as the best way to resolve the Greek debt crisis and ensure the stability of the European currency used by 19 nations.
“There
are clear rules, and anybody who doesn’t stick to the rules cannot be
an example for others,” Julia Klöckner, a senior member of Ms. Merkel’s
Christian Democrats, said in an interview Thursday.
Ms. Klöckner reflects the German belief that the economic success of post-World War II
West Germany was rooted in obeying rules and that its projection of
power in Europe relies on binding public commitment to keeping order.
“The
Germans naturally have a great fixation with rules,” said Josef
Janning, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign
Relations. “They often substitute order for politics, because they often
do not trust politics. In the last century the Germans were not
especially spoiled by politics.” The allusion was to the turbulent 20th
century governments in Germany: the Weimar Republic, the Nazis’ Third
Reich and the post-1945 communist East.
Multimedia Feature: Greece’s Debt Crisis Explained
Other Europeans, who have very different memories of World War II
and its aftermath, often fail to grasp the extent to which this history
shapes German decisions on Europe. Conversely, the Germans struggle to
understand that their view does not come naturally to their 27 partners
in the European Union.
“Maybe
this is our mistake, that we project on to other states and cannot cope
with ‘anything goes,’ ” Mr. Janning said. “Consequently, it is very
difficult for Germans to understand why it doesn’t work in Greece, why
we can’t progress.”
Anyone
who has ever spent time in Germany is struck by the reflexive embrace
of rules, the immaculate order of its many small towns and the
stereotypical picture of everyone waiting for the green pedestrian
crossing light to traverse even the emptiest of roads.
“The world is better with rules,” said Hans-Werner Sinn, president of the Ifo Institute economic
research group in Munich and a strong advocate of Greece’s leaving the
eurozone. He likened the binding commitment on financial partnership to
the very public vows of a marriage.
Reflecting
how contentious support for Greece has been over the past six years,
among the sharpest critics this time around have been lawmakers in the
chancellor’s conservative bloc who once served in her cabinet. Peter
Ramsauer, a member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union who was
transport minister from 2009 to 2013, said that while in the government
he had expressed his “strongest reservations” internally, but went along
with bailouts passed in 2010 and 2012.
This
February, he withheld support for extending Greece’s bailout, he said,
“because I saw it all coming — and now it actually turned out even
worse.”
Portraits From Greece as It Endures a Crisis
If
Europe’s leaders agree this weekend, by their self-imposed deadline of
midnight Sunday, to start negotiating a third bailout for Greece, it
will require approval from, among others, Germany’s Parliament. That
could prove tough.
“Trust in the Greek government has been completely frittered away,” Mr. Ramsauer said.
Wolfgang
Bosbach, a senior member of Ms. Merkel’s party who has served in
Parliament for more than 20 years, has long believed that Greece is not
fit to be in the eurozone, which it joined in 2001 on the basis of what
Athens years later admitted were cooked figures.
“Nothing
will change in the next few years,” Mr. Bosbach said. “It can be that
in the next days people make statements promising that a new era is now
at hand. I have been hearing that for five years.” He said no
constituents had told him they thought Greece should get more financial
support.
Even
the Social Democrats, center-left partners in Ms. Merkel’s coalition
government, are hardening their attitudes, as seen in the tough
statements coming from their leader. Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has
been unusually blunt in his criticism of Greece, brushing off party
critics who accuse him of being hardhearted.
“The
real problem of Greece is that for years they have been exploited by
their political and economic elites,” he told students in Dresden on
Thursday. “The real wrongdoers are those who failed to build up the
country.”
“It’s
not a case of bringing Alexis Tsipras to his knees,” Mr. Gabriel said,
referring to the Greek prime minister. “But it is certainly not that
Europe should be brought to its knees.”
This weekend may see the opening of yet another chapter in Europe’s long debt crisis. But it seems impossible that it will reconcile very differing German, Greek and other views of the Continent’s future.
Confronted with attempts to compare the debt relief afforded post-Nazi West Germany in 1953,
Germans are quick to recall that they kept strictly to the terms of
that generosity and accounted for the money spent. “That’s where the
differences lie,” Mr. Ramsauer said. “And that is a fundamental
difference.”
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