Merkel allies using crisis for last-ditch survival bid

OPINION:Coalition partners are hoping to capitalise on prevailing anti-Greek feeling and present themselves as a white knight for German taxpayers – relying on the fact that Merkel will put up it as she has nowhere else to go

AT THE opening of a Berlin Wall memorial last month, Chancellor Angela Merkel joined in singing a verse of the German protest song defending freedom of expression: “Die Gedanken Sind Frei” – “thoughts are free”.

There was no reprise yesterday when she took a break from battling the euro zone crisis to open a new exhibition in a former East Berlin border checkpoint.

She is fighting a losing battle against freedom of thought and expression in her own government.

What seems on the surface to be about the euro zone and Greece is, in fact, the last attempt by Merkel’s coalition partner to save itself from drowning.

On Monday Merkel’s economics minister Philipp Rösler, deputy chancellor and leader of the Free Democrats (FDP), penned an opinion article that expressed many standard government positions – the euro is our future, Germany has profited greatly, Greece needs continued reform – in a far more robust tone.

“The basic rule is this: to stabilise the euro, there can be no more taboos. This includes, if necessary, an orderly insolvency in Greece if the necessary instruments are available.” The word “insolvency” set the cat among the financial market pigeons.

Two interventions on Tuesday by Merkel, warning against loose talk in the euro zone crisis, didn’t stop Rösler’s allies from repeating his claim.

Flatlining in opinion polls for months has left the liberal FDP a deeply insecure party. The euro zone crisis has left it divided, too. In the middle of this division stands Rösler: the 38-year-old FDP leader of just four months.

One FDP camp, led by Eurosceptic MP Frank Schäffler and party budgetary spokesman Hermann Otto Solms, sees their party at a political dead end. Their solution: to openly oppose Greek bailouts and present themselves as a white knight for German taxpayers.

At first glance their strategy is political suicide, risking a coalition break-up, a snap election and an FDP wipe-out. Their calculated guess, though, is that Merkel will have to put up with it because she also has nowhere else to go.

The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens have regrouped and, in poll numbers at least, are ready to return to power. Former finance minister Peer Steinbrück is warming up on the political sidelines to unseat Merkel in 2013 – or sooner.

For Solms and Schäffler there is no salvation for Greece in the euro zone and the FDP has much to gain by being the first party to point this out in public. And they don’t just have Greece in their sights: Schäffler is gathering member signatures to force a party vote on the permanent bailout structure (ESM) before it goes before parliament in December.

“For the FDP the alternative to this strategy is no future, so why linger on to the end?” said one senior Solms strategist yesterday.

“We want to bind this coalition closer together. We want to show we can fight for the earners in this country rather than pay secretaries in Greece to retire at 50.”

Their populist strategy has alarmed the other big camp in the FDP, a more conservative wing based in the regions. They insist that Rösler is not heading down the Solms-Schäffler eurosceptic path, just testing the waters before pitching himself as a milder, EU-critical alternative. The problem for this group is that Rösler’s opinion piece puts the party some distance from the pro-European tradition of Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

“I am for a Europe of democracy and subsidiarity and against a Europe from above,” wrote Rösler.

“This is about setting a Europe of people, values and rules against a Europe of constrictive centralism.”

The article left them wondering if Rösler really wants to beat the FDP Eurosceptics or join them?

“The correct answer to Schäffler is a strong pro-European political speech, not to sink to the level of bar-room ranting against Greece,” said one official in the pro-EU camp. “Schäffler scores points on Greece in the party, but has no answers for what comes next: when markets price in insolvencies in Spain and Italy.”

Already this debate is spreading beyond the FDP.

Opinion polls show that a majority of Germans remain supportive of closer European integration but that two-thirds oppose further bailouts.

Jumping on the FDP band-wagon yesterday was transport minister Peter Ramsauer from Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU) – another party in need of a poll boost. Yesterday, he told the Die Zeit weekly that it “wouldn’t be the end of the world” if Greece left the euro zone.

The unspeakable is now being spoken in Berlin and Merkel is determined not to react.

Claims from her spokesman yesterday that the cabinet is “in agreement over the path and goal of European policy” rang strangely hollow.

Derek Scally is The Irish TimesBerlin correspondent