© Alkis Konstantinidis/EPAGreece has begun its six-month presidency of the European Union. Finance minister Yannis Stournaras said Greece does not want to have any more fiscal conditionality
Coinciding with a growing backlash across the EU against the austerity policies mainly scripted in Berlin, the start of Greece's EU presidency reinforced the isolation of German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has dominated the policy response to the EU crisis for the past four years.
Following four years at the sharpest end of Europe's debt and currency crisis and €250bn in bailout funds, the Greek government declared enough was enough.
"Greece does not want to have any more fiscal conditionality," the finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, said on Wednesday. "It is out of the question because it is already too tough."
The cry of exhaustion from a country that went broke, sank into years of slump and mass unemployment, slashed labour costs, and saw incomes collapse by more than a third is finding an echo not only across southern Europe but in the prosperous north, too, as leaders fear for their career prospects.
They have had enough of austerity, leaving Merkel, the main architect of spending cuts as the cure to Europe's malaise, isolated as seldom before in what is becoming less of a financial crisis and more of a political battle for Europe's future direction.
"The acute phase of the financial crisis is now over," the US financier, George Soros, said last week. "Future crises will be political in origin." He foresaw a bleak period of Japanese-style stagnation worsened by constant bickering between EU national leaders.
"What was meant to be a voluntary association of equal states has now been transformed by the euro crisis into a relationship between creditor and debtor countries that is neither voluntary nor equal. Indeed, the euro could destroy the EU altogether."
The political frictions are visible, with leaders using vivid language to try to sway one another and win the argument. Merkel recently likened the situation to that of 1914, complaining of complacency and speaking of sleepwalking European leaders who led the continent into the first world war. She also evoked parallels with growing up under communism in East Germany, a rare public reference to her childhood experiences.
Describing the mood among most EU national leaders, a senior policymaker in Brussels said: "The worst of the crisis is over. So the pressure to take tough measures is off. We've had enough of discipline, enough of sanctions, we're sufficiently unpopular already. The worst is over, so let's stop now."
Merkel, whose steering of the euro crisis propelled her to soaring popularity at home and a third term, has become increasingly resented among elites in other EU capitals, underlining the differences between Germany and the rest.
"The problem in Europe is that there is a government headed by one person," a west European ambassador said in reference to Merkel. "That's the issue and how to deal with it. All decisions are taken by one leader. This is what is happening now."
If that has been a big part of the narrative for the past few years, however, the story went into reverse just before Christmas in the first week of Merkel's new term. She went to a Brussels EU summit determined to push a new policy of compelling structural reforms on the economies of the eurozone. But she found herself supported by not one single other national leader, opposed not only by her foes, but also her friends such as the Dutch, Austrians and Finns.
"It was really a strange discussion," said the policymaker, "difficult from the start, full of prejudice, ideology and fear." Merkel was said to be disappointed. That much is clear from her private remarks to fellow leaders at the summit. A transcript of the exchange, obtained by Le Monde, highlighted her frustration.
She said: "Sooner or later the currency will explode without the necessary cohesion. If everyone behaves as they could under communism, then we are lost."
Merkel's plan was to empower the European commission in Brussels to police structural reforms in eurozone countries and to sweeten the pain of the changes by partially subsidising them. She denied that she was dictating anything, but said it was better to spend €3bn on the changes now than €10bn later.
She was supported by three European presidents, José Manuel Barroso of the commission, Herman Van Rompuy chairing the summit and Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank. None of the trio have to face the voter. All the other elected leaders were against and the plan was shelved.
One prime minister warned that the years of austerity had given rise to increasing populism. In Athens on Wednesday, the deputy Greek prime minister, Evangelos Venizelos, spoke of the growing appeal of neo-Nazis, racists and xenophobes. "In most of the EU we see a new wave of euro-scepticism."
Soros went so far as to blame the German chancellor for this. "Angela Merkel's policies are giving rise to extremist movements in the rest of Europe."
The strength of the new anti-European movements on the far right and the hard left will be tested in the elections for the European parliament in May when they are expected to make gains at the expense of the centre and possibly win the poll outright in countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and Greece.
Fear of the impact of more extreme politics helps to explain the current aversion in most of Europe to the crisis solutions scripted in Berlin.
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