Economic Tensions Grow in the EU

The Ecofin meeting of EU Economic and Finance Ministers included the debut of Germany’s new Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil on May 13. The meeting started badly and ended worse. On one side, Klingbeil presented the German decision to violate the fiscal rules which were forced through by Germany one year ago; a widespread feeling is that nobody will prevent Germany from violating fiscal rules, even if the EU Commission were to issue a formal censorship. More probably, Brussels will concede a waiver to those rules—which it refused to do for Greece in 2011. One step further in the ongoing disintegration of the EU.