GERMANY:CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has insisted that European treaty changes are the only way to achieve the kind of EU budgetary surveillance and discipline measures Berlin is seeking.
Yesterday’s suggestions from the European Commission have divided her government: while Dr Merkel called them “an important step in the right direction but not sufficient”, her junior coalition partner described the proposals as too sufficient by half.
“We need a stronger oversight mechanism for the stability and growth pact and the European Commission can only make suggestions below treaty change,” said Dr Merkel. “We believe that anyone aiming for a durable and robust stability pact has to take treaty change into account.”
Her remarks reflect growing concern in her government of its parliamentary majority ahead of next week’s vote on the €700 billion eurozone stability package agreed at the weekend.
Already the opposition Social Democrats have refused to back the proposal unless the government attaches steps towards a financial transaction tax to the bill. They abstained from last week’s Greek package vote on similar grounds.
Their withdrawal of support is more of symbolic than a practical setback – the government majority can pass the bill regardless – but unhappiness about Germany’s snowballing EU financial obligations has now spread to government ranks.
Free Democrat (FDP) leader Guido Westerwelle, German foreign minister and deputy chancellor, said the proposals infringed on a “core competence” of parliamentary democracy.
“It’s the German Bundestag and national parliaments that determine national budgets, not the European Commission,” he said.
German MPs in all parties expressed concern yesterday that the Commission proposals would curtail their influence.
“Our constitution conveys the right to prepare the budget on the Bundestag and no one in the Bundestag will allow that right to be taken from them,” said Renate Künast, a Green Party parliamentary leader.
Dr Merkel tried to allay concerns by portraying it as an early-warning system, not an automatic attempt to co-opt budgetary competence from parliaments.
“It just means that the Commission can say early on if the budget doesn’t fulfill the Stability Pact criteria,” she said. “I don’t consider it a bad thing, more a means of achieving transparency without pre-empting national parliamentary discussion.”
A government spokesman played down Dr Merkel’s demands for treaty change yesterday, saying she was aware of resistance from Ireland and other EU member states. “She is a realist and she knows things can’t be changed ad hoc,” said the spokesman.