{"id":184612,"date":"2012-03-06T20:47:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T01:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/03\/06\/someone-remembers-the-old-lesson-do-not-let-german-chancellors-run-europe\/"},"modified":"2012-03-06T20:47:00","modified_gmt":"2012-03-07T01:47:00","slug":"someone-remembers-the-old-lesson-do-not-let-german-chancellors-run-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/03\/06\/someone-remembers-the-old-lesson-do-not-let-german-chancellors-run-europe\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Remembers the Old Lesson: Do Not Let German Chancellors Run Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

To the accolades of his countrymen, Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy has told Sarkosy and Merkel to go Cheney themselves<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Spanish rebellion has begun, sooner and more dramatically than I expected.<\/p>\n

As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission and the European Council (hijacked by Merkozy).<\/p>\n

Taking what he called a “sovereign decision”, he simply announced that he intends to ignore the EU deficit target of 4.4pc of GDP for this year, setting his own target of 5.8pc instead (down from 8.5pc in 2011).<\/p>\n

In the twenty years or so that I have been following EU affairs closely, I cannot remember such a bold and open act of defiance by any state. Usually such matters are fudged. Countries stretch the line, but do not actually cross it.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

What is striking is the wave of support for Mr Rajoy from the Spanish commentariat.<\/p>\n

This one from Pablo Sebasti\u00e1n left me speechless.<\/p>\n

My loose translation:<\/p>\n

“Spain isn\u2019t any old country that will allow itself to be humiliated by the German Chancellor.”<\/p>\n

“The behaviour of the European Commission towards Spain over recent days has been infamous and exceeds their treaty powers\u2026 these Eurocrats think they are the owners and masters of Spain.”<\/p>\n

“Spain and other nations in the EU are sick and tired of Chancellor Merkel\u2019s meddling and Germany\u2019s usurpation \u2013 with the help of Sarkozy\u2019s France and their pretended “executive presidency” that does not in fact exist in EU treaties.”<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The Latin Bloc is awakening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Germans don’t realize just how deeply disliked they are, and this has nothing<\/b> to do with the unpleasantness from 70 years ago.<\/p>\n

Politicians prime directive is to be reelected, and once they realize that calling Angela Merkel a c%$# sucker ensures electoral success, the pretty much everyone in Europe (except for Nicolas Sarkosy, who is desperately clinging to in what appears to be a vain attempt for politic survival) is going to start telling her to pound sand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the accolades of his countrymen, Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy has told Sarkosy and Merkel to go Cheney themselves: The Spanish rebellion has begun, sooner and more dramatically than I expected. As many readers will already have seen, Premier Mariano Rajoy has refused point blank to comply with the austerity demands of the European Commission …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,984,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-europe","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}