The acrimony (bitterhet) highlights how Europe is mired in the same old divisions that almost tore it apart during the sovereign debt crisis almost a decade ago.
Bloomberg 8 April 2020
In 2012 she /Ms Merkel/ said there would be no eurobonds “as long as I live”. After nine European heads of government wrote a joint letter last month saying the EU needed to “work on a common debt instrument”, she said pointedly that that wasn’t “the opinion of all member states”.
Germany’s constitutional court had made clear that such an innovation would need the prior approval of the Bundestag, and a two-thirds majority might be required for such a fundamental change
FT 6 April 2020
Time to integrate further or break-up
For two decades they /Northern leaders /have shied away from the fact that the currency union cannot succeed unless its members share more risk.
If they do not face up to that today, the euro, and perhaps the European Union itself, will not survive.
The Economist 11 April 2020
To the astonishment of almost everyone in the room, Angela Merkel began to cry.
the man sitting next to her, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and the other across the table, US President Barack Obama
Das ist nicht fair.” That is not fair, the German chancellor said angrily, tears welling in her eyes. “Ich bringe mich nicht selbst um.” I am not going to commit suicide.
A cornered Ms Merkel threw the French and American criticism back in their faces. If Mr Sarkozy or Mr Obama did not like the way her government ran, they had only themselves to blame. After all, it was their allied militaries that had “imposed” the German constitution on a defeated wartime foe six decades earlier.
Peter Spiegel, Financial Times 11 May 2014
