In a dumbfounding interview given this week for German tabloid Bild, the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who is currently wooing Germany, has overstepped the limits of what his status and role permit.
After he approved with a great deal of fanfare the dubious headline of the newspaper, which represents him with a spiked helmet (that journalists gave him and which is now on display in his office), he explained that « Nicolas Sarkozy was right to say that Europe has much to learn from Germany », that the German model was « the best possible, because they invented a model of growth without excessive debt »; that the best thing that the Germans could do, was « not to change their policy » (therefore to vote for Merkel); that « the European social model was dead, because it could only be financed by debt »; that « the major part of the European crisis was behind us, if each country would take the necessary steps to redress the balance »; he concluded by saying his hostility towards eurobonds.
First, this is historically inaccurate, because Germany is just as indebted as France, and it is conservative governments in France and Italy, Greece or elsewhere (in the U.S. in particular), that have manufactured insurmountable public debts; it is also contrary to the work of the ECB, which injected in the space of a month a thousand billion euros in a bankrupt European banking system, to enable it to repay its debts, installing a form of Ponzi scheme across the continent. The ECB did not save the European Union in December. It just saved itself by using money printing. This does not give it the right to attempt to impose on the EU an economic and political model.
Indeed, such statements are a breach to his mandate: the European Central Bank is neither there to choose the best German leader, nor to denounce social democracy and even less to advertise liberalism. It is there to protect European depositors against the abuses of high inflation, as part of the European Union’s policy, decided by the organs of the Union, and in compliance with the policy choices of each country.
If the European political leaders go along with this sideways shift without reacting, they will permit the imposition on the continent of the ideology of the German right-wingers, after allowing that of competition.
This would be disastrous. First because, as has been often said here, Germany is not going so well, especially because of its demographic catastrophe. Then, because the ideology of competition prevents today, stubbornly, the birth of European giants in all sectors where they would be essential. Finally, because the return to growth in Europe calls for a global policy, funded by a federal budget and Eurobonds, in order to develop tomorrow’s energy sources and establish communication networks upon which its future depends.
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For a European Federation: http://www.eurofederation.eu