Euroalueella riidellään taas. Vastakkain ovat pohjoinen (Suomi, Saksa, Hollanti ja Itävalta) ja etelä (Italia kumppaneineen). Nämä kirjoitukset avaavat sitä, miksi pohjoisessa suhtaudutaan nuivasti italialaisten vaatimuksiin. Pohjois- ja etelä-Euroopalla on kyllä valtava ero.
"Regardless of the euphemisms used whenever this subject comes up, what is being asked for are fiscal transfers from countries with a greater capacity to borrow to those with less. Leave aside for a moment whether this is or is not the right course of action. What is certain is that it will not happen without clarity and conditionality.
Take Italy — the Italian economy has underperformed on almost every metric for decades, due in large part to structural inefficiencies that Italians acknowledge but simply refuse to address.
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This and much else, before the world had ever heard of Covid-19, explains Italy’s debt-to-gross domestic product ratio of 135 per cent.
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Matteo Salvini and Italy’s other populists ask for “solidarity” when they mean money and then swing into perverse arrogance by suggesting that unless Germans pay up there will be no one to buy BMWs. The notion that German taxpayers should support Italian spending so that German workers can work their full shifts while Italians buy BMWs with the money Germans have just sent is (someone should tell Mr Salvini) unlikely to be persuasive. The endless insults based on the cliché of German historical stereotype serve no purpose other than to embarrass us."
FT: Letter: When Italy’s populists ask for solidarity, what they mean is money
"First, the EU will not die as a result of a possible failure of the eurozone to cope with the current crisis. The EU is not the eurozone. There is no reason to assume that a collapse of the eurozone will jeopardise the internal market and the customs union. Sweden and Denmark do pretty well without the euro. So did the UK.
The eurozone problems are of an entirely different nature. Italy’s miserable financial situation is not the result of the coronavirus crisis, but of its high public debt and a political system that is not capable or willing to take steps to combat the large non-taxpaying black economy. In the absence of a common eurozone budget mechanism allowing the monitoring and enforcement of a reduction in the public debt of euro member states, the instrument of eurobonds will negatively affect the economies of the countries that did take austerity measures when the time was right to do so. Where was Italy’s solidarity when German workers voluntarily agreed to temporarily refrain from salary increases in order to make their economy sound again?
It looks as if Italy wants to take full advantage of the blessings of the euro but fiercely rejects compliance with the rules aimed to sustain the euro. In the long run this will be detrimental to the euro as a whole. This has nothing to do with a lack of solidarity."
FT: Letter: EU will not ‘die’ if single currency fails to cope