GERMAN REACTION:ANGELA MERKEL'S deal at the EU summit in Brussels was given a cautious welcome in Germany yesterday as a "partial victory" and a "lap win".
While the Chancellor called the Brussels agreement for tougher sanctions a “quantum leap” for euro-zone stability, German commentators noted that one of her two demands – to suspend voting rights of repeat deficit offenders – was now off the table.
During the week, German ears pricked up at news of the unhappiness which Berlin’s tough negotiating line was creating in other European capitals.
As the summit postmortem began yesterday, many analysts asked whether Berlin’s partial victory was worth it.
“A powerful Germany is setting the tone in the EU like never before,” remarked the Westdeutsche Allgemeine newspaper. “But the distance to the others has grown, too.”
"Merkel got her lap victory, but a bitter aftertaste remains," concluded ARD public television's Tagesschaunews service in a commentary. "Merkel's new style, away from negotiating and towards Gerhard Schröder 'basta' politics, may be effective, and further German interests in Europe. But it doesn't inspire trust."
Since the Greek bailout the EU sanctions debate has been followed closely by Germans, many of whom are increasingly suspicious they will be financially liable for a bottomless pit of EU debt.
“I’m boiling with rage,” wrote user “Cugel” on the Abendschau website message board. “Small treaty changes mean the door into a transfer union has been opened.”
Munich’s influential Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, paraphrasing Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, described yesterday’s summit as “little ado about nothing”. The Bild tabloid summed the deal up as “Merkel’s victory on points”.
Leading German officials expressed confidence yesterday that the deal to be finalised in December will meet the approval of Germany’s constitutional court.
The court, in Karlsruhe, is expected to deliver a crucial ruling next year on a complaint from several economists that ad-hoc rescue packages for Greece and the euro zone as a whole breached the Maastricht Treaty’s “no bailout” rule.
Without new sanction measures or a permanent crisis measure involving private parties, as Dr Merkel demanded, German politicians warned that the court would torpedo existing and future bailouts.
Yesterday, government politicians commended EU leaders for “showing understanding for the legal conditions in which is operating”.
Thomas Silberhorn, European spokesman for the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party of Dr Merkel’s CDU, warned that further effort would be required to hammer out a binding deal by December. “If this doesn’t happen,” he said, “the situation will be resolved in Germany not by politicians but by judges.”