The euro crisis makes itself felt in development assistance

The euro crisis makes itself felt in development assistance
Landgrabbing and pension funds hit, especially in Africa
The generosity of the super-rich in the ARD
First The euro crisis makes itself felt in development assistance

An article by Markus Schönherr reported in the daily newspaper New Germany today, that many EU countries, according to shorten ONEs DATA report their spending on development cooperation in crisis due to the €. Some financially unstable countries such as Spain and Greece reduced its 2011 development budget accordingly by 30-40 percent. Other crisis-weakened countries, e.g. Ireland, were ahead of Germany but in spite of their difficult situation in its development commitments. The EU15 had promised in 2005, 0.7 percent of economic output in 2015 to invest in development aid. Germany is far behind with 0.39 percent. Therefore see ONE of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which can be reached by 2015 at risk. On the question of how difficult it was amid the crisis, more assistance to developing countries can afford to, commented Tobias Kahler, Germany chief of ONE. "Our solidarity with the individual states of the euro crisis, Germany's promise is where the poorest people in the world in proportion," How beautiful gentleman writes, Germany had for Greece within a few days about twenty times higher than the amount mobilized for Africa in ten years.

Second Landgrabbing and pension funds hit, especially in Africa

Germany is paymaster in European crisis

Policy issues in the euro crisis - With an "exceptional circumstances" justified the Finance Minister today in the Bundestag, the billions of aid for the Spanish banks. Looking at the last months of the crisis, European politics, can not escape the impression that in the euro area is a state of emergency gradually become the norm. Under the bailout, it is getting tight: Greeks, Irishmen, Portuguese, Spanish and Cypriots have now sought refuge there. If the heavily indebted Italy to come, the money should be just the relief fund. The growing danger of a European conflagration. Since it is understandable that

EURO CRISIS Spain maintains inventory

In Madrid, a little grumbles about the "austerity" in Berlin. The crisis forced the country to self-criticism.

As long as the euro crisis continues, one should not refer to Southerners as Spaniards. This could easily result in the roughened German public misunderstandings. Liederlich, irresponsible, unreliable, those are just some of the attributes with which we in this country occupies the south. Because it is better to speak of Spain as the country beyond the Pyrenees, which had been an empire in a long agony to relative insignificance and fell in the 20th Century almost four decades under the dictatorship of General Franco froze. After Franco's death, sought and found Spain to join Europe. It began an unprecedented, rapid ascent.

Since the country's accession into the European Union in 1986, doubled by the year 2009, the per capita income of the Spaniards. Spain and the EU - that we must not forget - is a success story that is now but an abrupt end. The Madrid government has asked banks for funding from Brussels, the EU's imminent intervention along the lines of Greece could. The question is whether Spain can find a way out of this crisis? It has the power and the conditions for this?

In difficult times, the temptation is great everywhere, looking for scapegoats. The overcome believed national stereotypes reinforce, in Germany like the lifestyle of "southerners" to the debt crisis blamed, and is "in the" southerners complained about the excessive hardness of Germany, the weaker economies drifting straight into the abyss.

The slogan: It will get worse before it gets better

The official Spain is comparatively reticent on this point. Angela Merkel with a Hitler mustache you look in vain in Madrid. One reason for this is that the Spaniards until November 2011, the conservative Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy and his ausstatteten with an absolute majority - Rajoy was already in the program, what Merkel called for: save, save, save. This was done out of conviction, not by outside pressure. The "realism", the one in Berlin demands of indebted countries, has long since established itself in Spain. There is no expectation that things will get better quickly.

600,000 jobs will be lost this year also. The government has announced. Their slogan: It will get worse before it gets better. How long can it be "" worse, without leading to social revolts, it can make no predictions. But so far is the incredibly high youth unemployment by the still-functioning family network are collected and, more recently, by emigration, for example, to Germany.

Are critical of the attitude of the government in Berlin is of course also in Madrid. "The markets do not believe in €. The euro is fundamentally a structural defects. This is the central problem, not Greece, not even Spain! ", Says José Ignacio Torreblanca of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Really, this argument may seem, it lends itself so well as the ability to deflect attention from their own inadequacies. The fears of the German government. Crisis countries such as Spain could be dismissed by pointing to the euro itself from responsibility.

A general crisis of capitalism

Euro-rescue Merkel calls Gauck of plain text in the crisis

Joachim Gauck, Angela Merkel (in February): "Sometimes it is difficult to explain".
President Gauck directed by TV interview admonishing words to Angela Merkel. The Chancellor must explain to the citizens of the euro rescue better: "It is our duty to describe in detail what that means." Merkel's critics, who complain to the Constitutional Court, he says.


Berlin - Angela Merkel is to explain to the citizens of the euro rescue in all the details better. The President has called Joachim Gauck in the ZDF Summer interview. "She now has the obligation to describe in great detail, what this means, also means fiscally." The overall policy would communicate sometimes too little, Gauck said in the interview. "Sometimes it is difficult to explain what is at stake. And sometimes lack the energy to say the population is very open to what actually happens." He could help there.

But Gauck is not entirely satisfied with the Chancellor. On the contrary. He regarded her work with great respect, he said. "I could not do what they can and what it does right now."
Gauck had praise, however, even for those left, who before the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has filed suit against the Fiscal Pact and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Say, for opponents of Merkel's crisis policy. "The plaintiffs have every right to bring their concerns to express," said Gauck. He has intensively dealt with the complaints and demand. "I am glad that this will happen." He would like to see a broad social debate.

Next Tuesday, the judges in Karlsruhe negotiate on the urgent requests. A decision by the highest German court is expected in July.