Germany is pushing for changes to EU treaties “as soon as
possible” after the May European elections, in an overhaul to fuse
eurozone economic governance behind a budget chief and euro area
parliament.
In interviews, speeches and articles, Wolfgang Schäuble,
Germany’s finance minister, has given urgency and political impetus to
Berlin’s longstanding ideas for a refashioned and more centralised eurozone.
Speaking at the College of Europe in Bruges, Mr Schäuble
outlined a vision for a changing EU treaties to establish a “budget
commissioner” empowered
to use common funds and reject national fiscal
plans if they “don’t correspond to the rules”.
Asked when he envisaged agreeing the treaties, he said
“today is better than tomorrow” and called for negotiations to start
straight after the European parliament elections in May.
These reforms to integrate the eurozone, he added, must be
paired with measures to ensure those countries outside are not
“systematically disadvantaged” – an approach that will be welcomed by
Britain.
In a joint Financial Times article with George Osborne, the
UK chancellor, he wrote that future treaty change “must include reform
of the governance framework to put euro area integration on a sound
legal basis, and guarantee fairness for those EU countries inside the
single market but outside the single currency”.
Mr Schäuble’s intervention to restart the reform debate
highlights Berlin’s determination that the EU should build on the
eurozone’s fragile economic recovery from the financial crisis by
creating institutions strong enough to withstand future turmoil.
The veteran finance minister’s pledge to fight for reform
comes after the joint declaration in January from German chancellor
Angela Merkel and French president François Hollande, pledging to work
for closer economic and monetary union.
But the German government has now gone a step further,
arguing in the FT that treaty change must also address one of key
negotiating demands of Mr Cameron, the UK prime minister, before his
planned 2017 referendum: the protection of the interests of euro “outs”.
Mr Schäuble, a long-term advocate of reform, wants to
establish an institutional architecture for a common fiscal and economic
policy, with a parliament, finance minister and budget to support
countries in crisis and encourage reform.
He said it was “nonsense” to suggest the power for a
eurozone commissioner to reject national budgets would impinge on
sovereignty. “To stick to the rules is not a violation of budget
sovereignty . . . of national sovereignty. We have moved sovereignty to
the European level,” he said.
Germany’s renewed appetite for treaty reform will rattle
some eurozone member states, which fear the centralisation of budget
power would potentially trigger national plebiscites that could not be
won.
Big gains for more radical, eurosceptic parties in the May
elections could undermine efforts by mainstream parties such as Ms
Merkel’s CDU to build a political consensus for strengthening the
eurozone.
Acknowledging the populist threat in an interview with
Handelsblatt, the business daily, Mr Schäuble said that the performance
of France’s National Front in the recent local elections and the growth
of eurosceptic parties elsewhere was “not a good development”.
But he took comfort from hopes that the Ukraine crisis
could boost voter support for European integration, saying: “Europe
always advances in a crisis . . . the crisis in Ukraine will make people
in Europe more confidence about the value of European integration
again, and motivate them to vote. Then the turnout would rise, and the
eurosceptic forces would likely perform worse than many fear today.”
The finance minister forecast that the effect of the crisis
for the German economy would be “manageable”. As for sanctions, German
industry had made clear that if they were imposed it would be ready.
“You have to convince Russia with diplomacy and economic pressure.
Compliance with the rules and principles is not only in the interests of
the west but also Russia.”
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