GERMAN FINANCE minister Wolfgang Schäuble has been tipped to assume control of the euro group of finance ministers when long-term head Jean-Claude Juncker steps down next year.
The proposed move would shore up Berlin’s influence on the single currency after Friday’s shock departure of ECB executive board member Jürgen Stark.
After Mr Schäuble nominated his deputy, Jörg Asmussen, to succeed Mr Stark in Frankfurt, Mr Juncker, who is also Luxembourg’s prime minister, called for a full-time euro group president when he stands down in 2012.
“If we have the European Stability Mechanism, it makes sense to have a full-time president,” he said. Focus news magazine quoted senior EU diplomats as saying: “If Schäuble wants it, it’s his.” German officials declined to comment on the claims yesterday.
Meanwhile Mr Schäuble’s finance minister predecessor Peer Steinbrück has called for a new institution to issue euro bonds – for which recipients would hand over budgetary sovereignty.
“A country that wants to benefit from euro bonds would have to give up part of its budget sovereignty to an independent institution,” said Mr Steinbrück in Der Spiegel magazine.
“Of course this means that Germany will have to pay,” he said, “but it is money well invested in our future and that of Europe, in peace and prosperity”. He accused German leader Angela Merkel of “duplicity” for opposing euro bonds without admitting the consequences of allowing the reformed EFSF to buy up sovereign bonds.
“What would happen if one of the countries cannot buy back these bonds? Then the euro countries would be liable on a pro-rata basis,” he said, “but the chancellor can’t admit that now because half of her parliamentary party would go through the roof of the Bundestag”.