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轻轻地说话，但没有大棒
欧盟最高经济官员誓言秉承成员国的预算赤字严格限制。但与柏林的Pedro Solbes'不良摊牌意味着欧盟缺乏执行自己规则的意志。这是运行金钱联盟的任何方式吗？
欧盟最高经济官员誓言秉承成员国的预算赤字严格限制。但与柏林的Pedro Solbes'不良摊牌意味着欧盟缺乏执行自己规则的意志。这是运行金钱联盟的任何方式吗？
By Tom Buerkle
April 2002
亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者杂志
Pedro Solbes喜欢通过规则发挥作用。在20世纪90年代初，担任菲利普·甘齐齐斯亚慱体育app怎么下载社会主义政府的农业部长，他发现西班牙超过其欧洲联盟的牛奶生产配额。尽管避免避免欧盟委员会的愤怒，但是，正如许多部长都会这样做，索克斯飞往布鲁塞尔才能承认，而不是避免欧盟委员会的愤怒。面对他的奉献者，委员会不仅可以罚款，还同意提高西班牙的牛奶配额。
Now, as the EU's commissioner for economic and monetary affairs , Europe's top economic policymaker and, as part of his brief, chief enforcer of fiscal discipline , Solbes remains a stickler for the rules.
他警惕最突出的最突出的对象：德国。1月份，当该国披露2001年的赤字等于其GDP的2.6％时，Solbes毫不犹豫地向公开提出柏林进行官方警告，这是自欧元三年前推出以来的第一个此类行动，风险违规风险欧盟的3％的赤字天花板。
同时，他向葡萄牙提出了相同的警告，在其迫在眉睫的赤字问题上。在欧盟条款中，仅提出警告被认为是一个急剧的谴责。
Solbes'德国的责骂被总裁GerhardSchröder迅速谴责，他并没有欣赏艰难的重新选择运动开始干扰布鲁塞尔（见下文故事）。德国成功地在欧盟财政部长委员会举行了威胁警告，以换取新的承诺，以便在2004年进行平衡。财政部长还拒绝了葡萄牙的警告。
The unwillingness of EU finance ministers to back up Solbes dealt a significant blow to the credibility of the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, the agreement that sets deficit limits. That it was Germany , the author of the stability pact , that rebelled against the rules underscored the EU's lack of discipline.
“德国在不试图坚持商定的欧洲财政规则方面设立了一个糟糕的例子，”Bundesbank副总裁JürgenStark表示，当时他在20世纪90年代中期担任副总馆时，他帮助在20世纪90年代中期撰写稳定契约。“协议的可信度似乎在短期内受损。”
Schroder Salomon Smith Barney的高级欧洲经济学家JoséLuisAlzola，欧盟第一次有一个大国家的问题，[金融部长]偷偷摸摸。““这基本上是另一示范，决定在欧盟，特别是宏观经济政策制作，非常困难。”
对于金融市场而言，道德很清楚，阿尔佐拉竞争：欧盟有“有效地放弃了财政整合”。我们不应该预计平均实际收益率降低，因为财政政策无济于事。“
Solbes, however, is unbowed. He remains determined to uphold the spirit and letter of the pact, even if his enforcement powers appear inadequate for the task. "We have done what we had to do," Solbes said in a recent interview with Institutional Investor. "If a situation similar to this one is presented, of course the commission will react in the same way."
The 59-year-old Solbes will need all of his tenacity in the months ahead. The showdown over Germany's intractable budget deficit highlighted one of the inherent weaknesses of the euro: Although 12 of the 15 EU countries share a single currency and a single monetary policy, they still can't manage to coordinate their fiscal policies well enough to support the currency and foster a robust rate of growth.
也许更重要的是，欧盟国家尚不愿意以真正的执法权力备份委员会。规则存在于纸上，但索勒布斯只能提出;财政部长处置。德国事件表明，欧盟国家缺乏遵守威廉的意志力，并执行他们所写的规则。
在一个提前的例子中，欧盟财政部长委员会罗马诺·普卓在去年的尝试中，通过要求欧盟各国在采用国家预算之前咨询欧元区的政策合作。
索尔巴斯在他以前的纪律成员国的尝试中也有很多运气。他去年使用大规模的预算盈余来削减税收，称，通过威胁促进燃料通胀，举动违反了欧盟的广泛经济政策准则。爱尔兰财政部长查理McCreevy抗议谴责和唾弃的索勒斯的支出削减或税收增加，以缓解通胀压力，并从苏格兰人场下车。事实证明，爱尔兰经济放缓的严峻经济放缓有效地抹去了通胀问题，因为委员会后来承认
尽管他的政策套利，但Solbes不是一个寻求对抗的人。如此柔软的话，有时几乎听到，他通过安静的持久性和努力制作他的标记。“Pedro不像其他西班牙人一样，”西班牙驻法国西班牙大使Javier Elorza说，过去与布鲁塞尔的高级外交官密切合作。“他总是平静;他总是很酷。他没有攻击人，他使用它们。他可以与地球上的任何人合作。”
欧盟官员已经关闭了Solbes的队伍，并捍卫了与德国的妥协，该款于2月份布鲁塞尔驻欧盟财政部长会议。他们指出，警告将仍有几个即时政策后果;另一方面，为了避免一个，德国财政部长汉斯Eichel有义务提出几项新承诺。
他同意排除任何可自由支配的个人开支ncreases before Germany's parliamentary elections in September, to stay within the 3 percent deficit limit this year. He also promised to bring Germany's budget "close to balance" by 2004. Many economists doubt that he can achieve this. Portugal made a similar pledge, and economists are equally skeptical of Lisbon's ability to bring its budget near to balance.
然而，欧洲央行总裁Wim Duisenberg和持续的赤字支出批评，赞同，至关重要，妥协。德国和葡萄牙对赤字减少的承诺“清楚地走出了另外要求的，”Duisenberg发言人ManfredKörber说。
欧盟官员还指出，警告事件做出的赤字在德国活动的一个主要问题，应确保凡在九月当选上实现预算平衡放置一个高优先级。来自反对派基督教民主党的校长候选人的埃德蒙特·斯托·基督教社会联盟联盟通过建议德国通过借入3％的限制来刺激增长，推出了他的竞选活动。后期后，他已经放弃了这个论点，并开始攻击施罗德的社会民主政府，主持经济恶化和赤字。
"The debate in Germany has never been this intense about fiscal problems," says Klaus Regling, director general for economic and monetary affairs at the commission, who co-drafted the stability pact with Stark at the German Finance Ministry in the '90s. "I would have preferred all this not to happen, but the result was good, so I have no problems with it."
对于Solbes，事件以特征性的正票据结束。他的决心甚至在德国赢得了他的奖金，这是对对抗的批评克鲁塞德。法兰克福州Allgemeine Zeitung将讲道朗克斯，为“一项无礼的权力政治展示”。
一个邮政工人的儿子来自西班牙哥斯达布兰卡的阿利坎特附近的一个小镇，Solbes赢得了博士学位。在20世纪60年代后期加入西班牙贸易部作为一名公务员，在新的马德里大学学习经济学中的政治学。在20世纪80年代，他帮助促进西班牙进入那些被称为欧洲共同体的内容，首先是经济学和贸易部的高级官员，然后担任外交部的EC关系秘书长。在该工作索赔中，在1986年，在该国入境后，在该国在该国入境之后，Spain遵守欧盟法规的许多冲突。
会员协议包括了七年德尔ay in Brussels' reduction of a customs duty on Spanish exports to the rest of the EU, from 17 percent to the EU average of 5.5 percent. Naturally, many Spanish industrialists opposed any delay, but Solbes stuck to the agreement, considering the duties a spur to Spanish productivity.
Events proved him right. Companies streamlined, investment in Spain soared, and Spanish exports to the EU surged. The EU subsequently cut the delay to five years. "He was clever enough to know what was important and what wasn't [in negotiating with the EU]," ambassador Elorza says.
Solbes' success in smoothing over hundreds of niggling trade issues during Spain's early years in the EU won him the admiration of his boss, Francisco Fernández Ordoñez, then foreign minister and one of the handful of people around prime minister González who helped bring the Socialists to power. Having such a patron was critical in a country where personal loyalty can loom larger than ideology. Thus Solbes, although a technocrat rather than a politician, was tapped by González to be agriculture minister in 1991. Two years later he was named finance minister even though he was not a Socialist Party member.
At Finance Solbes had a rude initiation. Within weeks of his arrival, Spain was forced to devalue the peseta during an intense bout of European currency speculation. "I suffered personally," he says, noting that he will go down in history as the last man to preside over a Spanish devaluation. But the experience made him determined to get Spain into the monetary union, to banish exchange rate instability once and for all.
Solbes made deficit reduction his top priority, a wrenching change for a Socialist government that regarded deficit spending as a tool of progress. "We had to change the culture," he says. Unfortunately, he had little success in controlling spending by Spain's regional Socialist Party barons, and the deficit remained a massive 6 percent of GDP in 1995. "He didn't have the power in the party [to control spending]," one official says. When José María Aznar's Popular Party government took power in 1996, it had to impose austerity measures to qualify Spain for the euro.
尽管他缺乏成功，但索勒斯的声誉作为预算克制和西班牙语参与欧元的倡导者仍然完好无损。当社会主义者在1999年1999年欧洲委员会的两个席位提名他的两个席位时，可以否决提名的Aznar毫不犹豫地犹豫不决。
对在弗朗诺下的公共服务的人毫不奇怪，罗斯向社会主义者下的部长高度崛起，现在与Aznar的保守政府舒适地工作，Solbes将自己描述为一个实用主义者而不是意识形态。“我没有通过理论分析达到我的[政策]职位，而是通过实践经验，”他说。他谈到了团结，而不是社会主义，并说虽然保健和养老金是普遍的权利，但必须以经济实惠的水平设定福利。
该索索尔应该在最近的德国争议中心找到自己是适合的，因为他在锻造稳定协议方面发挥了重要作用。1995年，当时德国金融部长，1995年欧盟财政部长委员会主席要求欧盟采取赤字限制。当时，欧元的想法正在获得可信度，而Waigel则需要约束财政规则，以便与德国欧盟国家/地区分享货币的德国人担忧。
“我的第一反应不是非常积极,”Solbesacknowledges. He was then focused on winning agreement on a changeover strategy to switch from national currencies to the euro. It covered everything from establishing the European Central Bank to introducing notes and coins to finding a name for the single currency. Waigel's sudden insistence on new budgetary rules risked a political confrontation that could have derailed the entire project, and Solbes initially sought to quash the demand.
但是，在西班牙瓦伦西亚驻瓦伦西亚的欧盟财政部长和中央银行人员的非正式会议上，索尔巴斯·索尔斯·汉斯·蒂埃默尔·汉斯·汉斯··蒂埃迈的叙事而被说服了索尔巴人。如果欧盟国家将分享货币，他们将需要规则，以防止一些成员运行可能为每个人推出利率的过度赤字。还有清楚的是，如果欧盟采取赤字限额，各国将旨在达到均衡的预算或盈余，以便他们可以在糟糕的时期停留在极限范围内。
逻辑也可以看出它，因此，Solbes坚持不懈。“理由已经说明了我们所有人，”他说。“我对契约的存在感到满意。这是货币联盟的关键要素之一。”
Solbes was instrumental in forging an EU consensus behind the stability pact. Stark, who was present at the Valencia meeting as Waigel's deputy, recalls Solbes telling his fellow ministers, "We have to agree on rules to bind our successors."
当时，没有人会预测，稍后不到十年，西班牙人将使用“公约”向财政纪律讲授德国人。但是，许多欧洲人担心会使德国经济统治持久的德国设计的项目是德国设计的项目的最终讽刺意味着，因此，迄今为止，以前的国家而非德国也有人受益。西班牙接受财政克制，兴起繁荣，因为它的一次高利率陷入困境与德国的较低水平相同。去年，自格兰科政权于1975年结束以来，该国首次录得盈余。
事实上，欧元区12个国家中有八个在2001年享有平衡的预算或盈余，甚至意大利甚至意大利都将其赤字修剪为1.4％的GDP。然而，德国仍然是经济麻木，由统一，高税收和过度监管的成本造成的。结果是持续的缺陷。
Solbes'作为前金融部长和欧元项目的主要合作者的地位肯定加强了他的权威。他无法移开的风度，与他的前任的威尔士威尔夫斯·泰菲尔·德斯·斯基金争夺鲜明对比，赢得了委员会同事，欧盟部长和欧洲央行的赞誉。“像他这样的人作为一个人，尊重他的能力，”一位欧盟官员称。
But unlike most finance ministers, Solbes is not a true politician. He never did join the Socialist Party, even while serving as a minister under González. Although his calls for budgetary restraint, pension reform and other difficult measures were laudable, his lack of political clout curbed his effectiveness.
“他是一个非常好的人，但如果你想成为政治，你需要是一个坏人，”Spain的电力调节器前负责人MiguelFernándezordoñez。
Solbes showed political naïveté in proposing the warnings without being certain he could get them approved by the council of finance ministers. Portugal immediately opposed the action. Eichel, however, initially hinted that Germany might accept a warning, presumably to try to minimize any policy prescriptions.
但是，当施德洛德袭击纽约世界经济论坛后的委员会袭击了委员会时，它很快就会显然，Solbes不会有足够的支持。最终，只有奥地利，比利时，芬兰和荷兰支持警告。法国和意大利预计将与德国一方面。U.K.在会议前三天结算了这个问题：国经内科尔校长的戈登布朗宣布他会回到Eichel。这被认为是对索尔巴斯的回报，他去年批评了他的计划加入英国社会支出并将预算推向赤字的计划。
"The commission didn't have any support at all," says one British official. "They made a mistake. They've lost credibility."
Solbes拒绝了Naïveté的指控，并说他完全了解财务部长可能会抑制他。但他坚持认为，对于稳定的公约仍然可信，委员会必须遵守规则，而不是响应政治压力。“委员会是否不得不在合法地做某事，因为在理事会的这种风险？”他问。“我的立场很清楚：没有。”
Schröder has posed a more serious criticism: Why did the commission propose a warning when the agency had endorsed the economic policies that produced the deficit in the first place? Germany introduced the first round of a five-year tax cut package last year that is projected to add the equivalent of 1 percent of GDP to the deficit. That was a violation of the spirit of the stability pact, given that the German budget wasn't yet close to being in balance.
但Solbes和委员会支持这一举动，在相信税收确实将提升该国的增长潜力。毕竟，普通期税率的所得税税率于去年德国仍然处于50.7％，而欧盟平均值43％，美国税率为30％。正如一位欧盟官员所说，“如果每个人都同意他们做正确的事情，那么向德国向德国发出警告是什么？”
Solbes捍卫他对税收削减的支持，作为应用欧盟赤字规则的灵活性的例子。他表示，他赞同柏林的政策，即政府在增长拾取时将其优先转向赤字减少的条件。正如发生的那样，增长股息从未来过。相反，全球放缓将德国推入去年下半年的经济衰退。然后，Solbes坚持认为，他的双手被欧盟规则捆绑在一起：“如果你接近3％，那么我们委员会有义务说些什么。”
For all of his determination to respect the rules, Solbes proved adept at compromise when he realized he lacked support for the warning. While Eichel lobbied fellow ministers over the phone during the week before the February ministerial meeting, Solbes met with ECB president Duisenberg to test his support for a deal. Duisenberg suggested the outlines of the compromise in a February 7 news conference, saying, "If there are ways to extract certain definitive and well-defined commitments from the governments concerned, that might replace the early warning."
A draft of those commitments was hammered out the following Monday by ministerial deputies at a meeting that Germany and Portugal boycotted. That evening, after six hours of heated debate among the euro group, consisting of finance ministers from the 12 euro-zone countries, Eichel signed on to the package. He was reconciled to his fellow ministers' not rejecting Solbes' proposal outright, as Germany wanted.
Still, the outcome of the confrontation casts serious doubt upon the willingness of EU members to actually enforce the stability pact. After all, the pact explicitly calls for a warning if a country's deficit diverges significantly from its planned level or if it approaches 3 percent. Germany's deficit last year exceeded the government's budgeted level by more than 1 percentage point and was less than half a percentage point from the ceiling. If the EU wouldn't issue a warning under those circumstances, what are the chances that ministers will take action if Germany violates the 3 percent limit?
“信誉通常涉及可预测性，”伦敦信用瑞士信贷第一波士顿的经济学家Christophe duval-Kieffer说。“妥协尚不清楚德国失败的后果来遵守其新的预算承诺。可能是妥协，可能是妥协吗？”
Solbes admits to being frustrated that the early-warning procedures weren't followed but pronounces himself "quite satisfied" with Eichel's commitment to balance the budget. Will EU countries enforce his recommendations if Germany falls short again? "I don't know," Solbes acknowledges. "But we in the commission have the obligation to work on the basis of the existing legislation."
"The aim of the warning was achieved," concurs the Spanish Treasury's director general, Gloria Hernández, who played a key role in forging the compromise. "Germany and Portugal committed themselves to avoiding a breach of the 3 percent." She adds that there was "no doubt at all" that ministers would take action were Germany or any other euro-zone country to break the 3 percent rule.
比利时财务部长Didier Reynders在去年担任欧洲欧元集团时，他竞选较近的预算合作，他感到遗憾的是，德国践踏了早期预警程序，但欢迎妥协的实质内容。
“德国有一个非常清晰的信息，”他说。“欧元集团的同伴压力相当有效。”然而，Reynders承认，在财政部长委员会内获得合格的大多数投票，以执行稳定协议是一个潜在的缺陷。“如果预算局势在德国没有改善，则无法重复该行动。我们必须投票，而且，这是契约的可信度将发挥作用，”他说。
But it remains doubtful whether Germany can live up to its end of the compromise and bring its budget close to balance by 2004. Since the February meeting Germany has issued revised figures showing that growth was slightly lower last year, at 0.6 percent, and the deficit slightly higher, at 2.7 percent of GDP. With growth expected to be very sluggish at 0.7 percent this year and to recover to no more than 2.5 percent in 2003 and 2004, Germany would need to take serious belt-tightening measures of the kind it has ducked for years to bring its budget anywhere near balance. And yet Germany has already programmed a second round of tax cuts for 2003, worth E18 billion ($15.9 billion), the equivalent of just under 1 percent of GDP.
“2004年的目标根本没有信誉，”摩根士丹利经济学家埃里克·努温说。“保持这个目标破坏了委员会和欧盟政府的可信度。”
Solbes认为，尽管他承认，但他承认德国很可能需要在2003年或2004年做出大量的支出削减。
Eichel started to address the problem late last month by negotiating a national stability pact with the German Länder, or state governments, whose red ink is mainly responsible for the country's deficit woes. The federal deficit, which Eichel controls, remained effectively unchanged last year at E26.9 billion. But the combined deficits of the 16 Länder ballooned to E25.6 billion from E7.9 billion. Add some red ink spilled by local governments and the social security system, which also count under EU rules, and Germany's total deficit hit E56.3 billion last year. In 2000 Germany posted a surplus of E23.9 billion, but that was only because of a one-time windfall of E50 billion from the auctioning of mobile telephone rights.
最近的协议要求Eichel在2003年和2004年将联邦支出减少0.5％，而以前的计划分别增加0.6％和1％的计划。这些州承诺将支出限制在每年的每年增加到1％，从计划的2％下降。
Solbes welcomes the agreement as potentially significant but says, "We have to follow what happens in reality." Many outside analysts remain skeptical that the German pact will meet Eichel's tough budget goals. "There is no way the federal government can arm-twist regional governments," says Moritz Kraemer, an analyst in the sovereign ratings group at Standard & Poor's in London. "The fiscal situation in Germany is at a point where it is hard to see, without an economic recovery, how a catch-up with its European peers could occur."
Eichel，官员说，谢尔塞德在谢尔塞德转变为高调问题之前愿意接受警告，似乎决心埋葬争端。他和他的副拒绝了接受采访的要求。“我们现在不想与委员会冲突，”金融部发言人托马斯格哈尔特说。“委员会已经履行了职责。一切都在工作。”
Germany's difficulties revive questions about the economic merits of the stability pact, which have persisted ever since it was proposed. Most economists agree that some form of budgetary discipline and coordination is needed in the euro zone, but many regard the pact as a crude and potentially counterproductive tool. For one thing, the 3 percent ceiling is arbitrary; it simply corresponds to the average deficit level in the early 1990s, when the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The pact also restricts the ability of governments to quickly respond to economic downturns like the one that hit the euro zone last year, while failing to guarantee long-term fiscal discipline, as Germany's case shows.
“在每一项严重的经济沉闷期间，这些门槛将被违反，”柏林研究所的研究所的经济学家Gustav Horn说。“我认为其他国家可能受到严重经济问题的国家。”喇叭认为，德国将疯狂地试图在2004年到2004年的预算：“Eichel必须在短时间内省大量资金。它会伤害恢复。”
At the February EU meeting, Britain's Brown mounted a strong attack against the stability pact, which U.K. officials regard as an obstacle to British membership in the euro zone. He argued that the EU should take greater account of the economic cycle and the debt levels of individual countries when assessing deficits. Brown was angered last year when the commission cautioned him about planning major increases in spending on health care and other public services. With a national debt of 39 percent of GDP, the third lowest in the EU, the U.K. can easily afford to spend more, Brown asserts.
"We believe there needs to be coordination between fiscal and monetary policy," one British official says. "But we don't think the way the pact is being interpreted at the moment is economically very sensible."
Solbes已经回应了一些这些批评。他去年赢得了融资部长批准，以考虑国家循环调整的赤字，而不仅仅是标称赤字，在评估与协议遵守方面。由于这种转变，委员会建议欧盟国家宽敞的福利支出和去年税收收入下降，而不是在经济放缓中施加紧缩措施。
首先,然而,国家需要他们的预算s in order. Countries like Finland, which posted a budget surplus of 4.8 percent of GDP last year, have a lot more leeway to tolerate budget slippage than Germany. "What is rather clear is that even if the economic conditions are not good, you cannot trespass the 3 percent," says Solbes.
索勒斯将有很多思考今年。今年春天他计划引入新的建议，以加强欧元区预算和经济政策的合作。但官员承认，任何设定正式规则的企图就可能被部长们拒绝，因为他们是去年的。只要德国仍然如此接近赤字限制，始终存在稳定契约的另一个测试的可能性。
Solbes不愿意批评部长，充分了解自己有限的执法权力。但如果有人试图扯掉协议，不要指望他走一步。“你不能问裁判，这是委员会改变比赛的规则，”他说。
BerhardSchröder，布鲁塞尔·斯波尔德
2月德国对欧洲委员会对布鲁塞尔对柏林预算赤字的批评进行了方向。鉴于国家对财政总值的声誉，这是一个引人注目的叛乱表现。但事件远非独特。
最近几个月，柏林在若干问题上冲突了布鲁塞尔，上个月总理格哈德·施德洛德要求他的政府与由委员会主席Romano Prodi领导的Eurocrats团队之间会议。
Schröder于1998年来到电力，很有希望德国的剩余战后的抑制并站起来为国家利益而站起来，他通过立即要求他的国家对欧盟预算的大规模贡献减少了没有人惊讶。但随着德国选举的另一个德国选举，他的欧盟袭击已经采取了令人担忧的布鲁塞尔官员的凶猛。毕竟，德国对较近欧盟融合的传统支持使其成为委员会的坚定，最强大的盟友。前总理HelmutKöhl和前任委员会主席雅克斯在80年代末和90年代初期提出的温暖关系有助于保持欧盟对货币联盟的轨道。
Schröder的首席申诉：委员会提案将对欧盟化学品行业提供更严格的环境限制，校长对德国强大的化学物业部门的威胁;委员会指令要求汽车制造商通过德国汽车制造商戴姆勒克莱斯勒和宝马强烈反对的举动来松开控制权;委员会有达到泛欧元接管指令，德国去年否决权，以保护其公司免受外国掠夺者的威胁;委员会试图通过破解柏林对前东德国的行业的补贴来加强现有竞争规则的执行。委员会提出警告德国让其赤字蠕变靠近3％GDP的天花板只是最后一根稻草。
Sources say that Schröder regards commission actions as evidence that it is biased against the manufacturing industries that dominate the German economy. He is determined to stand up for manufacturers as vigorously as the U.K. defends the City and France its farmers.
"The German position has shifted since unification," one senior commission official says. "They absorbed 17 million people , a poor country , into their own. That has required a lot of state investment, which has altered their views about the role of the state in the economy."
Schröder上个月在欧盟首脑会议前夕见过普罗迪，并要求与委员会会面，这是一个非常不寻常的一步。校长官员表示，他们预计Prodi和若干同事，包括内部市场委员会弗里茨·博克斯坦和竞争委员会马里奥·蒙蒂，本月来到柏林或接下来。
The hope in Brussels is that Schröder is just talking tough before the national election in September and not signaling a serious shift to Euroskepticism. Klaus Becher, a German analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, endorses this view. "It seems to be more and more common that one tries to raise one's profile by standing up to the bogeymen in Brussels," he says.
But the scope and intensity of Schröder's complaints suggest that Germany's economic woes are causing Berlin to waver on its EU commitments. "He would like to give aid right and left and be seen as the guy who manages industry,'' says Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "You can't do that."
Maybe not under EU laws, but if Schröder persists in his truculence, those laws will be hard for the commission to enforce. , T.B.
By Tom Buerkle
April 2002
亚博赞助欧冠机构投资者杂志
Pedro Solbes喜欢通过规则发挥作用。在20世纪90年代初，担任菲利普·甘齐齐斯亚慱体育app怎么下载社会主义政府的农业部长，他发现西班牙超过其欧洲联盟的牛奶生产配额。尽管避免避免欧盟委员会的愤怒，但是，正如许多部长都会这样做，索克斯飞往布鲁塞尔才能承认，而不是避免欧盟委员会的愤怒。面对他的奉献者，委员会不仅可以罚款，还同意提高西班牙的牛奶配额。
Now, as the EU's commissioner for economic and monetary affairs , Europe's top economic policymaker and, as part of his brief, chief enforcer of fiscal discipline , Solbes remains a stickler for the rules.
他警惕最突出的最突出的对象：德国。1月份，当该国披露2001年的赤字等于其GDP的2.6％时，Solbes毫不犹豫地向公开提出柏林进行官方警告，这是自欧元三年前推出以来的第一个此类行动，风险违规风险欧盟的3％的赤字天花板。
同时，他向葡萄牙提出了相同的警告，在其迫在眉睫的赤字问题上。在欧盟条款中，仅提出警告被认为是一个急剧的谴责。
Solbes'德国的责骂被总裁GerhardSchröder迅速谴责，他并没有欣赏艰难的重新选择运动开始干扰布鲁塞尔（见下文故事）。德国成功地在欧盟财政部长委员会举行了威胁警告，以换取新的承诺，以便在2004年进行平衡。财政部长还拒绝了葡萄牙的警告。
The unwillingness of EU finance ministers to back up Solbes dealt a significant blow to the credibility of the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, the agreement that sets deficit limits. That it was Germany , the author of the stability pact , that rebelled against the rules underscored the EU's lack of discipline.
“德国在不试图坚持商定的欧洲财政规则方面设立了一个糟糕的例子，”Bundesbank副总裁JürgenStark表示，当时他在20世纪90年代中期担任副总馆时，他帮助在20世纪90年代中期撰写稳定契约。“协议的可信度似乎在短期内受损。”
Schroder Salomon Smith Barney的高级欧洲经济学家JoséLuisAlzola，欧盟第一次有一个大国家的问题，[金融部长]偷偷摸摸。““这基本上是另一示范，决定在欧盟，特别是宏观经济政策制作，非常困难。”
对于金融市场而言，道德很清楚，阿尔佐拉竞争：欧盟有“有效地放弃了财政整合”。我们不应该预计平均实际收益率降低，因为财政政策无济于事。“
Solbes, however, is unbowed. He remains determined to uphold the spirit and letter of the pact, even if his enforcement powers appear inadequate for the task. "We have done what we had to do," Solbes said in a recent interview with Institutional Investor. "If a situation similar to this one is presented, of course the commission will react in the same way."
The 59-year-old Solbes will need all of his tenacity in the months ahead. The showdown over Germany's intractable budget deficit highlighted one of the inherent weaknesses of the euro: Although 12 of the 15 EU countries share a single currency and a single monetary policy, they still can't manage to coordinate their fiscal policies well enough to support the currency and foster a robust rate of growth.
也许更重要的是，欧盟国家尚不愿意以真正的执法权力备份委员会。规则存在于纸上，但索勒布斯只能提出;财政部长处置。德国事件表明，欧盟国家缺乏遵守威廉的意志力，并执行他们所写的规则。
在一个提前的例子中，欧盟财政部长委员会罗马诺·普卓在去年的尝试中，通过要求欧盟各国在采用国家预算之前咨询欧元区的政策合作。
索尔巴斯在他以前的纪律成员国的尝试中也有很多运气。他去年使用大规模的预算盈余来削减税收，称，通过威胁促进燃料通胀，举动违反了欧盟的广泛经济政策准则。爱尔兰财政部长查理McCreevy抗议谴责和唾弃的索勒斯的支出削减或税收增加，以缓解通胀压力，并从苏格兰人场下车。事实证明，爱尔兰经济放缓的严峻经济放缓有效地抹去了通胀问题，因为委员会后来承认
尽管他的政策套利，但Solbes不是一个寻求对抗的人。如此柔软的话，有时几乎听到，他通过安静的持久性和努力制作他的标记。“Pedro不像其他西班牙人一样，”西班牙驻法国西班牙大使Javier Elorza说，过去与布鲁塞尔的高级外交官密切合作。“他总是平静;他总是很酷。他没有攻击人，他使用它们。他可以与地球上的任何人合作。”
欧盟官员已经关闭了Solbes的队伍，并捍卫了与德国的妥协，该款于2月份布鲁塞尔驻欧盟财政部长会议。他们指出，警告将仍有几个即时政策后果;另一方面，为了避免一个，德国财政部长汉斯Eichel有义务提出几项新承诺。
他同意排除任何可自由支配的个人开支ncreases before Germany's parliamentary elections in September, to stay within the 3 percent deficit limit this year. He also promised to bring Germany's budget "close to balance" by 2004. Many economists doubt that he can achieve this. Portugal made a similar pledge, and economists are equally skeptical of Lisbon's ability to bring its budget near to balance.
然而，欧洲央行总裁Wim Duisenberg和持续的赤字支出批评，赞同，至关重要，妥协。德国和葡萄牙对赤字减少的承诺“清楚地走出了另外要求的，”Duisenberg发言人ManfredKörber说。
欧盟官员还指出，警告事件做出的赤字在德国活动的一个主要问题，应确保凡在九月当选上实现预算平衡放置一个高优先级。来自反对派基督教民主党的校长候选人的埃德蒙特·斯托·基督教社会联盟联盟通过建议德国通过借入3％的限制来刺激增长，推出了他的竞选活动。后期后，他已经放弃了这个论点，并开始攻击施罗德的社会民主政府，主持经济恶化和赤字。
"The debate in Germany has never been this intense about fiscal problems," says Klaus Regling, director general for economic and monetary affairs at the commission, who co-drafted the stability pact with Stark at the German Finance Ministry in the '90s. "I would have preferred all this not to happen, but the result was good, so I have no problems with it."
对于Solbes，事件以特征性的正票据结束。他的决心甚至在德国赢得了他的奖金，这是对对抗的批评克鲁塞德。法兰克福州Allgemeine Zeitung将讲道朗克斯，为“一项无礼的权力政治展示”。
一个邮政工人的儿子来自西班牙哥斯达布兰卡的阿利坎特附近的一个小镇，Solbes赢得了博士学位。在20世纪60年代后期加入西班牙贸易部作为一名公务员，在新的马德里大学学习经济学中的政治学。在20世纪80年代，他帮助促进西班牙进入那些被称为欧洲共同体的内容，首先是经济学和贸易部的高级官员，然后担任外交部的EC关系秘书长。在该工作索赔中，在1986年，在该国入境后，在该国在该国入境之后，Spain遵守欧盟法规的许多冲突。
会员协议包括了七年德尔ay in Brussels' reduction of a customs duty on Spanish exports to the rest of the EU, from 17 percent to the EU average of 5.5 percent. Naturally, many Spanish industrialists opposed any delay, but Solbes stuck to the agreement, considering the duties a spur to Spanish productivity.
Events proved him right. Companies streamlined, investment in Spain soared, and Spanish exports to the EU surged. The EU subsequently cut the delay to five years. "He was clever enough to know what was important and what wasn't [in negotiating with the EU]," ambassador Elorza says.
Solbes' success in smoothing over hundreds of niggling trade issues during Spain's early years in the EU won him the admiration of his boss, Francisco Fernández Ordoñez, then foreign minister and one of the handful of people around prime minister González who helped bring the Socialists to power. Having such a patron was critical in a country where personal loyalty can loom larger than ideology. Thus Solbes, although a technocrat rather than a politician, was tapped by González to be agriculture minister in 1991. Two years later he was named finance minister even though he was not a Socialist Party member.
At Finance Solbes had a rude initiation. Within weeks of his arrival, Spain was forced to devalue the peseta during an intense bout of European currency speculation. "I suffered personally," he says, noting that he will go down in history as the last man to preside over a Spanish devaluation. But the experience made him determined to get Spain into the monetary union, to banish exchange rate instability once and for all.
Solbes made deficit reduction his top priority, a wrenching change for a Socialist government that regarded deficit spending as a tool of progress. "We had to change the culture," he says. Unfortunately, he had little success in controlling spending by Spain's regional Socialist Party barons, and the deficit remained a massive 6 percent of GDP in 1995. "He didn't have the power in the party [to control spending]," one official says. When José María Aznar's Popular Party government took power in 1996, it had to impose austerity measures to qualify Spain for the euro.
尽管他缺乏成功，但索勒斯的声誉作为预算克制和西班牙语参与欧元的倡导者仍然完好无损。当社会主义者在1999年1999年欧洲委员会的两个席位提名他的两个席位时，可以否决提名的Aznar毫不犹豫地犹豫不决。
对在弗朗诺下的公共服务的人毫不奇怪，罗斯向社会主义者下的部长高度崛起，现在与Aznar的保守政府舒适地工作，Solbes将自己描述为一个实用主义者而不是意识形态。“我没有通过理论分析达到我的[政策]职位，而是通过实践经验，”他说。他谈到了团结，而不是社会主义，并说虽然保健和养老金是普遍的权利，但必须以经济实惠的水平设定福利。
该索索尔应该在最近的德国争议中心找到自己是适合的，因为他在锻造稳定协议方面发挥了重要作用。1995年，当时德国金融部长，1995年欧盟财政部长委员会主席要求欧盟采取赤字限制。当时，欧元的想法正在获得可信度，而Waigel则需要约束财政规则，以便与德国欧盟国家/地区分享货币的德国人担忧。
“我的第一反应不是非常积极,”Solbesacknowledges. He was then focused on winning agreement on a changeover strategy to switch from national currencies to the euro. It covered everything from establishing the European Central Bank to introducing notes and coins to finding a name for the single currency. Waigel's sudden insistence on new budgetary rules risked a political confrontation that could have derailed the entire project, and Solbes initially sought to quash the demand.
但是，在西班牙瓦伦西亚驻瓦伦西亚的欧盟财政部长和中央银行人员的非正式会议上，索尔巴斯·索尔斯·汉斯·蒂埃默尔·汉斯·汉斯··蒂埃迈的叙事而被说服了索尔巴人。如果欧盟国家将分享货币，他们将需要规则，以防止一些成员运行可能为每个人推出利率的过度赤字。还有清楚的是，如果欧盟采取赤字限额，各国将旨在达到均衡的预算或盈余，以便他们可以在糟糕的时期停留在极限范围内。
逻辑也可以看出它，因此，Solbes坚持不懈。“理由已经说明了我们所有人，”他说。“我对契约的存在感到满意。这是货币联盟的关键要素之一。”
Solbes was instrumental in forging an EU consensus behind the stability pact. Stark, who was present at the Valencia meeting as Waigel's deputy, recalls Solbes telling his fellow ministers, "We have to agree on rules to bind our successors."
当时，没有人会预测，稍后不到十年，西班牙人将使用“公约”向财政纪律讲授德国人。但是，许多欧洲人担心会使德国经济统治持久的德国设计的项目是德国设计的项目的最终讽刺意味着，因此，迄今为止，以前的国家而非德国也有人受益。西班牙接受财政克制，兴起繁荣，因为它的一次高利率陷入困境与德国的较低水平相同。去年，自格兰科政权于1975年结束以来，该国首次录得盈余。
事实上，欧元区12个国家中有八个在2001年享有平衡的预算或盈余，甚至意大利甚至意大利都将其赤字修剪为1.4％的GDP。然而，德国仍然是经济麻木，由统一，高税收和过度监管的成本造成的。结果是持续的缺陷。
Solbes'作为前金融部长和欧元项目的主要合作者的地位肯定加强了他的权威。他无法移开的风度，与他的前任的威尔士威尔夫斯·泰菲尔·德斯·斯基金争夺鲜明对比，赢得了委员会同事，欧盟部长和欧洲央行的赞誉。“像他这样的人作为一个人，尊重他的能力，”一位欧盟官员称。
But unlike most finance ministers, Solbes is not a true politician. He never did join the Socialist Party, even while serving as a minister under González. Although his calls for budgetary restraint, pension reform and other difficult measures were laudable, his lack of political clout curbed his effectiveness.
“他是一个非常好的人，但如果你想成为政治，你需要是一个坏人，”Spain的电力调节器前负责人MiguelFernándezordoñez。
Solbes showed political naïveté in proposing the warnings without being certain he could get them approved by the council of finance ministers. Portugal immediately opposed the action. Eichel, however, initially hinted that Germany might accept a warning, presumably to try to minimize any policy prescriptions.
但是，当施德洛德袭击纽约世界经济论坛后的委员会袭击了委员会时，它很快就会显然，Solbes不会有足够的支持。最终，只有奥地利，比利时，芬兰和荷兰支持警告。法国和意大利预计将与德国一方面。U.K.在会议前三天结算了这个问题：国经内科尔校长的戈登布朗宣布他会回到Eichel。这被认为是对索尔巴斯的回报，他去年批评了他的计划加入英国社会支出并将预算推向赤字的计划。
"The commission didn't have any support at all," says one British official. "They made a mistake. They've lost credibility."
Solbes拒绝了Naïveté的指控，并说他完全了解财务部长可能会抑制他。但他坚持认为，对于稳定的公约仍然可信，委员会必须遵守规则，而不是响应政治压力。“委员会是否不得不在合法地做某事，因为在理事会的这种风险？”他问。“我的立场很清楚：没有。”
Schröder has posed a more serious criticism: Why did the commission propose a warning when the agency had endorsed the economic policies that produced the deficit in the first place? Germany introduced the first round of a five-year tax cut package last year that is projected to add the equivalent of 1 percent of GDP to the deficit. That was a violation of the spirit of the stability pact, given that the German budget wasn't yet close to being in balance.
但Solbes和委员会支持这一举动，在相信税收确实将提升该国的增长潜力。毕竟，普通期税率的所得税税率于去年德国仍然处于50.7％，而欧盟平均值43％，美国税率为30％。正如一位欧盟官员所说，“如果每个人都同意他们做正确的事情，那么向德国向德国发出警告是什么？”
Solbes捍卫他对税收削减的支持，作为应用欧盟赤字规则的灵活性的例子。他表示，他赞同柏林的政策，即政府在增长拾取时将其优先转向赤字减少的条件。正如发生的那样，增长股息从未来过。相反，全球放缓将德国推入去年下半年的经济衰退。然后，Solbes坚持认为，他的双手被欧盟规则捆绑在一起：“如果你接近3％，那么我们委员会有义务说些什么。”
For all of his determination to respect the rules, Solbes proved adept at compromise when he realized he lacked support for the warning. While Eichel lobbied fellow ministers over the phone during the week before the February ministerial meeting, Solbes met with ECB president Duisenberg to test his support for a deal. Duisenberg suggested the outlines of the compromise in a February 7 news conference, saying, "If there are ways to extract certain definitive and well-defined commitments from the governments concerned, that might replace the early warning."
A draft of those commitments was hammered out the following Monday by ministerial deputies at a meeting that Germany and Portugal boycotted. That evening, after six hours of heated debate among the euro group, consisting of finance ministers from the 12 euro-zone countries, Eichel signed on to the package. He was reconciled to his fellow ministers' not rejecting Solbes' proposal outright, as Germany wanted.
Still, the outcome of the confrontation casts serious doubt upon the willingness of EU members to actually enforce the stability pact. After all, the pact explicitly calls for a warning if a country's deficit diverges significantly from its planned level or if it approaches 3 percent. Germany's deficit last year exceeded the government's budgeted level by more than 1 percentage point and was less than half a percentage point from the ceiling. If the EU wouldn't issue a warning under those circumstances, what are the chances that ministers will take action if Germany violates the 3 percent limit?
“信誉通常涉及可预测性，”伦敦信用瑞士信贷第一波士顿的经济学家Christophe duval-Kieffer说。“妥协尚不清楚德国失败的后果来遵守其新的预算承诺。可能是妥协，可能是妥协吗？”
Solbes admits to being frustrated that the early-warning procedures weren't followed but pronounces himself "quite satisfied" with Eichel's commitment to balance the budget. Will EU countries enforce his recommendations if Germany falls short again? "I don't know," Solbes acknowledges. "But we in the commission have the obligation to work on the basis of the existing legislation."
"The aim of the warning was achieved," concurs the Spanish Treasury's director general, Gloria Hernández, who played a key role in forging the compromise. "Germany and Portugal committed themselves to avoiding a breach of the 3 percent." She adds that there was "no doubt at all" that ministers would take action were Germany or any other euro-zone country to break the 3 percent rule.
比利时财务部长Didier Reynders在去年担任欧洲欧元集团时，他竞选较近的预算合作，他感到遗憾的是，德国践踏了早期预警程序，但欢迎妥协的实质内容。
“德国有一个非常清晰的信息，”他说。“欧元集团的同伴压力相当有效。”然而，Reynders承认，在财政部长委员会内获得合格的大多数投票，以执行稳定协议是一个潜在的缺陷。“如果预算局势在德国没有改善，则无法重复该行动。我们必须投票，而且，这是契约的可信度将发挥作用，”他说。
But it remains doubtful whether Germany can live up to its end of the compromise and bring its budget close to balance by 2004. Since the February meeting Germany has issued revised figures showing that growth was slightly lower last year, at 0.6 percent, and the deficit slightly higher, at 2.7 percent of GDP. With growth expected to be very sluggish at 0.7 percent this year and to recover to no more than 2.5 percent in 2003 and 2004, Germany would need to take serious belt-tightening measures of the kind it has ducked for years to bring its budget anywhere near balance. And yet Germany has already programmed a second round of tax cuts for 2003, worth E18 billion ($15.9 billion), the equivalent of just under 1 percent of GDP.
“2004年的目标根本没有信誉，”摩根士丹利经济学家埃里克·努温说。“保持这个目标破坏了委员会和欧盟政府的可信度。”
Solbes认为，尽管他承认，但他承认德国很可能需要在2003年或2004年做出大量的支出削减。
Eichel started to address the problem late last month by negotiating a national stability pact with the German Länder, or state governments, whose red ink is mainly responsible for the country's deficit woes. The federal deficit, which Eichel controls, remained effectively unchanged last year at E26.9 billion. But the combined deficits of the 16 Länder ballooned to E25.6 billion from E7.9 billion. Add some red ink spilled by local governments and the social security system, which also count under EU rules, and Germany's total deficit hit E56.3 billion last year. In 2000 Germany posted a surplus of E23.9 billion, but that was only because of a one-time windfall of E50 billion from the auctioning of mobile telephone rights.
最近的协议要求Eichel在2003年和2004年将联邦支出减少0.5％，而以前的计划分别增加0.6％和1％的计划。这些州承诺将支出限制在每年的每年增加到1％，从计划的2％下降。
Solbes welcomes the agreement as potentially significant but says, "We have to follow what happens in reality." Many outside analysts remain skeptical that the German pact will meet Eichel's tough budget goals. "There is no way the federal government can arm-twist regional governments," says Moritz Kraemer, an analyst in the sovereign ratings group at Standard & Poor's in London. "The fiscal situation in Germany is at a point where it is hard to see, without an economic recovery, how a catch-up with its European peers could occur."
Eichel，官员说，谢尔塞德在谢尔塞德转变为高调问题之前愿意接受警告，似乎决心埋葬争端。他和他的副拒绝了接受采访的要求。“我们现在不想与委员会冲突，”金融部发言人托马斯格哈尔特说。“委员会已经履行了职责。一切都在工作。”
Germany's difficulties revive questions about the economic merits of the stability pact, which have persisted ever since it was proposed. Most economists agree that some form of budgetary discipline and coordination is needed in the euro zone, but many regard the pact as a crude and potentially counterproductive tool. For one thing, the 3 percent ceiling is arbitrary; it simply corresponds to the average deficit level in the early 1990s, when the Maastricht Treaty was signed. The pact also restricts the ability of governments to quickly respond to economic downturns like the one that hit the euro zone last year, while failing to guarantee long-term fiscal discipline, as Germany's case shows.
“在每一项严重的经济沉闷期间，这些门槛将被违反，”柏林研究所的研究所的经济学家Gustav Horn说。“我认为其他国家可能受到严重经济问题的国家。”喇叭认为，德国将疯狂地试图在2004年到2004年的预算：“Eichel必须在短时间内省大量资金。它会伤害恢复。”
At the February EU meeting, Britain's Brown mounted a strong attack against the stability pact, which U.K. officials regard as an obstacle to British membership in the euro zone. He argued that the EU should take greater account of the economic cycle and the debt levels of individual countries when assessing deficits. Brown was angered last year when the commission cautioned him about planning major increases in spending on health care and other public services. With a national debt of 39 percent of GDP, the third lowest in the EU, the U.K. can easily afford to spend more, Brown asserts.
"We believe there needs to be coordination between fiscal and monetary policy," one British official says. "But we don't think the way the pact is being interpreted at the moment is economically very sensible."
Solbes已经回应了一些这些批评。他去年赢得了融资部长批准，以考虑国家循环调整的赤字，而不仅仅是标称赤字，在评估与协议遵守方面。由于这种转变，委员会建议欧盟国家宽敞的福利支出和去年税收收入下降，而不是在经济放缓中施加紧缩措施。
首先,然而,国家需要他们的预算s in order. Countries like Finland, which posted a budget surplus of 4.8 percent of GDP last year, have a lot more leeway to tolerate budget slippage than Germany. "What is rather clear is that even if the economic conditions are not good, you cannot trespass the 3 percent," says Solbes.
索勒斯将有很多思考今年。今年春天他计划引入新的建议，以加强欧元区预算和经济政策的合作。但官员承认，任何设定正式规则的企图就可能被部长们拒绝，因为他们是去年的。只要德国仍然如此接近赤字限制，始终存在稳定契约的另一个测试的可能性。
Solbes不愿意批评部长，充分了解自己有限的执法权力。但如果有人试图扯掉协议，不要指望他走一步。“你不能问裁判，这是委员会改变比赛的规则，”他说。
BerhardSchröder，布鲁塞尔·斯波尔德
2月德国对欧洲委员会对布鲁塞尔对柏林预算赤字的批评进行了方向。鉴于国家对财政总值的声誉，这是一个引人注目的叛乱表现。但事件远非独特。
最近几个月，柏林在若干问题上冲突了布鲁塞尔，上个月总理格哈德·施德洛德要求他的政府与由委员会主席Romano Prodi领导的Eurocrats团队之间会议。
Schröder于1998年来到电力，很有希望德国的剩余战后的抑制并站起来为国家利益而站起来，他通过立即要求他的国家对欧盟预算的大规模贡献减少了没有人惊讶。但随着德国选举的另一个德国选举，他的欧盟袭击已经采取了令人担忧的布鲁塞尔官员的凶猛。毕竟，德国对较近欧盟融合的传统支持使其成为委员会的坚定，最强大的盟友。前总理HelmutKöhl和前任委员会主席雅克斯在80年代末和90年代初期提出的温暖关系有助于保持欧盟对货币联盟的轨道。
Schröder的首席申诉：委员会提案将对欧盟化学品行业提供更严格的环境限制，校长对德国强大的化学物业部门的威胁;委员会指令要求汽车制造商通过德国汽车制造商戴姆勒克莱斯勒和宝马强烈反对的举动来松开控制权;委员会有达到泛欧元接管指令，德国去年否决权，以保护其公司免受外国掠夺者的威胁;委员会试图通过破解柏林对前东德国的行业的补贴来加强现有竞争规则的执行。委员会提出警告德国让其赤字蠕变靠近3％GDP的天花板只是最后一根稻草。
Sources say that Schröder regards commission actions as evidence that it is biased against the manufacturing industries that dominate the German economy. He is determined to stand up for manufacturers as vigorously as the U.K. defends the City and France its farmers.
"The German position has shifted since unification," one senior commission official says. "They absorbed 17 million people , a poor country , into their own. That has required a lot of state investment, which has altered their views about the role of the state in the economy."
Schröder上个月在欧盟首脑会议前夕见过普罗迪，并要求与委员会会面，这是一个非常不寻常的一步。校长官员表示，他们预计Prodi和若干同事，包括内部市场委员会弗里茨·博克斯坦和竞争委员会马里奥·蒙蒂，本月来到柏林或接下来。
The hope in Brussels is that Schröder is just talking tough before the national election in September and not signaling a serious shift to Euroskepticism. Klaus Becher, a German analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, endorses this view. "It seems to be more and more common that one tries to raise one's profile by standing up to the bogeymen in Brussels," he says.
But the scope and intensity of Schröder's complaints suggest that Germany's economic woes are causing Berlin to waver on its EU commitments. "He would like to give aid right and left and be seen as the guy who manages industry,'' says Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "You can't do that."
Maybe not under EU laws, but if Schröder persists in his truculence, those laws will be hard for the commission to enforce. , T.B.