| Summary/Abstract |
The euro crisis has underscored an uncomfortable reality: German primacy. Berlin’s critics see Germany as an unstoppable juggernaut using its economic and monetary might to enforce heartless and self-righteous Calvinist austerity. Chancellor Angela Merkel has emerged as a particular lightning rod. She is perceived as the sole decision-maker in Europe, at the expense of Germany’s downgraded European Union (EU) partners. Her determination
to enforce the diktat of strict fiscal austerity has, according to her critics, transformed the eurozone into an economic ‘prison’, with Germany as the gaoler, and German-inspired and German-enforced monetary-stability rules as the bars.
|