Monday, March 18, 2013

German Euro Sceptic Party

Germany now has its own Eurosceptic party, founded this Year by the journalist Conrad Adam, economics Professor Bernd Lucke and former IBM manager Henkel among others, the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) hopes to get into the Bundestag this September. The primary goal is to end the Euro of course but it is interesting how they want to achieve it.

We want to change the European Contracts so that any state is able to leave the Euro. Every nation has to be able to decide democratically over their currency.
Ok sounds reasonable. A nation can only be considered souvereign if it is able to choose its own currency. Of course this is for them just a means to achieve their goal of ending the Euro. The current plan sounds quite sinister, though:
We want that Germany enforces this right to leave the Euro by vetoing further  ESM loans.
So actually they don't want other nations to decide. Germany - through its power - will help them make this decision. This is also contrary to Lucke's statement that they want an orderly end of the Euro. What happens when Germany threatens its veto can currently be observed in Cyprus and nothing is orderly there.

There are a few more such talking points ranging from reduced EU bureaucracy to a simplified tax code but those wont help the all that much, since Merkel's CDU has either has a similar position or they are just generalities like: "Germany doesn't have enough children. It has to become more child and motherfriendly (sic)."

 In Germany a party has to get at least 5 % of the votes to get into the parliament. At this time it seems unlikely that the party will jump that hurdle. Even if it does AfD will definitely not become part of a coalition, so they will be rather irrelevant. But they might reduce the chances of the smallest partner in the Merkel government the struggling FDP to be in the next Bundestag.Thereby possibly preventing Merkel from being reelected. So we might see the former finance minister Steinbrück as chancellor.

This one bulletin point party is and will be irrelevant. But it got the media in Germany all dizzy, because some right wingers also want the Deutsche Mark back and therefore AfD is Hitler or something. Also it is dangerous, naive and have I mentioned Hitler? But the media also believes that the German economy is ever growing. They just make a habit of being wrong.

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