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Merkel Predecessor Schroeder Says Her Leadership Deficit Fans Greek CrisisMay 18, 2011 6:00 AM GMT+0800
Chancellor Angela Merkel has failed to lead during Europe’s debt crisis and must now rise above German public opinion to offer more help for troubled euro-area states, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said.
Merkel acted too slowly when the crisis unfolded last year, pandering to the “yellow press,” Schroeder said in an interview. Schroeder said the chancellor, who defeated him in 2005, should press for banks and other bondholders to take losses and give euro countries more time to cut budget deficits.
Schroeder’s comments may jibe with a change that’s emerging in Europe’s crisis-fighting strategy, as finance ministers in Brussels indicated they may shift some costs to bondholders in a “soft restructuring” of Greek debt. Merkel, as the leader of Europe’s largest economy, holds the key to Greece’s chances of escaping a restructuring.
“There’s a lack of leadership right now,” Schroeder said at his legal practice in the western German city of Hanover yesterday. Germany’s policy has been “too hesitant,” he said. “Someone has to say ‘that’s enough’ more often.”
Schroeder, 67, the Social Democratic chancellor who ruled for two terms as the head of a coalition with the Greens, oversaw the debut of the euro in Germany on Jan. 1, 1999, less than three months after he came to power. During his election campaign in 1998, he compared the euro to a “premature birth,” a judgment he now says was wrong.
‘Complete Nonsense’ The euro has been a boon for Germany and is worth defending, he said. All talk of countries leaving the currency union is “complete nonsense,” said Schroeder, who no longer holds elected office and is chairman of Nord Stream AG, a 7.4 billion-euro ($10.5 billion) Russian-controlled Baltic Sea gas pipeline that’s being built from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin in Germany.
To end the debt crisis that forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek outside aid, so-called haircuts involving compulsory losses for banks and other investors including the European Central Bank are “absolutely essential,” however uncomfortable they may be for vested interests, Schroeder said.
“In the long run, the government can’t justify aid programs to their voters unless they force creditors that have made a lot of money on the enormous interest rates for Greece and the others to share the cost,” he said. “That risk is already priced in.”
Merkel has repeatedly said her refusal to be rushed into aiding Greece last year was needed to force the Greek government to cut its budget deficit. Greece has the euro area’s biggest public debt relative to economic output. Greece’s debt will balloon to 157.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2011.
‘Better Job’ Schroeder contrasted Merkel’s position with that of her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who he said had called for “solidarity” with debt-laded countries early on. “He’s actually doing a better job,” Schroeder said.
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat like Merkel, said on May 16 that the European Union must stand by Greece as it goes through a difficult period.
“We are going forward with the Greeks,” Kohl said in a speech in Berlin that was attended by Merkel. “Those who say today that we have to break everything down and start from scratch are wrong.” Kohl, who served as chancellor from 1982 to 1998, was German leader when the treaty creating the euro was negotiated.
Schroeder criticized the “very unhelpful” warnings by lawmakers in Merkel’s coalition that they might reject the permanent rescue fund for indebted euro members. For all the misgivings over the post-2013 European Stability Mechanism, Schroeder predicted that lawmakers will back down and pass the ESM after the summer recess.
Don’t Spook Markets Speaking to high-school students in Berlin yesterday, Merkel said that restructuring the debt of euro-area countries before the ESM rules take effect risks spooking financial markets. Changing the rules of the current bailouts would “create incredible doubt about our credibility as governments” and undermine sovereign-bond markets, she said.
Schroeder echoed the government line that solidarity “cannot be a one-way street,” with aid recipients compelled to reduce their bloated budget deficits. At the same time, he said that “weaker economies” need time to cut debt.
“You can’t kill them by forcing them to make so many savings that the economy can’t grow anymore,” he said. “Greece can’t turn around decades of undisciplined policy in a few months.”
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