New figures from the German national statistics office DESTATIS showed last Friday that German exports reached €99.1bn in October – a record-high for a single month. The foreign trade balance showed a surplus of €17.9bn in the same month. Reading this, European Commissioner Olli Rehn, a liberal (!) from Finland, will be furious. Didn’t he, just a few weeks ago, send a warning to Berlin that Germany is on the wrong path. He blamed Angela Merkel’s government for an economy that is doing far much better than the rest of the Eurozone. He didn’t urge the other Eurozone memberstates to work a bit harder and to save a bit more money. No, in his opinion, Germany is doing it too well. Commission President Barroso tried to pure some oil on troubled water but too late…
Another European Commissioner who showed last week little sense of reality (and not for the first time) was Viviane Reding, a christen-democrat from Luxemburg. Britain’s welfare system is too generous and is to blame for attracting migrant workers from poorer EU member states, she said. EU laws are granting ample space to take action to stop welfare fraud by foreign nationals. So she advised the UK to change the social system and to make it less generous. Several other countries are supporting the British stand, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Finland and also the island states of Cyprus and Malta.
It seems that the distance between the European Commission and real life in the members states is growing bigger and bigger. One year to go before the new Commission is installed in the Berlaymont palace. I doubt it will be much better by then…
By: N. Peter Kramer
