União Europeia em crise: Alemanha e o resto: dualismo estrutural? Contradições do capitalismo bloqueiam a integração!

Alemanha sai da crise e evidencia ‘duas europas’

Empresas do país anunciam ampliações de fábricas e contratações para reafirmar modelo exportador, mas pedaço grande do continente ainda patina 

21 de janeiro de 2011 | 22h 30

Jamil Chade, de O Estado de S. Paulo

GENEBRA - A BMW, Daimler e Audi anunciam medidas surpreendentes para muitos: vão ampliar suas fábricas para conseguir atender aos pedidos recordes. Dois anos depois do auge da pior crise econômica desde a era Hitler, a Alemanha dá sinais claros de que já deixou a crise no passado.

Depois de registrar seu maior crescimento do PIB desde a reunificação em 1991, ontem foi a vez da confiança do setor privado sofrer a maior alta já registrada. As exportações para países emergentes e a volta do consumo doméstico estão impulsionando a economia alemã. Mas também revelando um lado obscuro da Europa: a existência cada vez mais acentuada de um bloco em duas velocidades.

Pesquisa com 7 mil empresários feita pelo instituto de Munique Ifo constatou que a confiança do setor privado atingiu seu ponto mais alto em duas décadas, em uma demonstração de que a maior economia da Europa estaria saindo de sua crise. O aumento do consumo doméstico e principalmente as exportações são os motivos da retomada.

Em 2010, a economia alemã cresceu 3,6%, bem acima de todas as demais da UE. Para 2011, Berlim chegou a rever para cima a expansão de sua economia, com uma projeção de 2,3%. Nem a alta dos preços de commodities e de minérios parece ser um problema. O governo já acredita que atingirá a meta de redução do déficit antes do prazo estipulado pela UE, de 2013.

Para economistas alemães, a explicação para o bom desempenho é simples. O modelo é baseado nas exportações e, com a importação de emergentes em alta, a economia alemã conseguiu resistir. O desemprego ficou em 7% e permitiu que o consumo interno fosse fortalecido.

"A economia alemã começou o ano com grande vigor", disse o presidente da Ifo, Hans-Werner Sinn. O resultado fez a bolsa de Frankfurt subir ao nível mais alto em dois anos e meio. Em toda a Europa, as bolsas também reagiram de forma positiva.

Para o presidente do BC alemão, Axel Weber, a economia do país "está se beneficiando de forma considerável da recuperação da economia global, principalmente dos mercados asiáticos emergentes", afirmou. "A demanda externa está mais uma vez dando impulsos fundamentais", disse.

Na imprensa alemã, o noticiário é bem diferente do que se via há um ano, com demissões pela Europa e empresas fechando suas portas. A Audi, por exemplo, anunciou seu maior projeto de expansão de sua história há duas semanas. A empresa pretende contratar 1,2 mil trabalhadores e investir 11,6 bilhões em quatro anos. Não esconde: quer vender 1 milhão de carros apenas na China até 2014.

Velocidade. Mas se o crescimento da Alemanha está sendo visto como um alívio para muitos na Europa, a expansão também escancara uma realidade que a UE evita falar: a existência de duas europas. Se a Alemanha cresce, países como Irlanda, Grécia, Portugal, Espanha e até Itália continuam sofrendo.

Só a taxa de desemprego na Espanha, por exemplo, é três vezes superior à da Alemanha.

Na zona do euro, a projeção é de que o crescimento das economias em 2011 será de apenas 1,5%, média já elevada graças ao desempenho alemão.

A diferença é tão grande que comentaristas europeus chegam a alertar os alemães de evitar comemorar a recuperação para não deixar os demais parceiros do bloco ainda mais irritados. Berlim chegou a ser chamado de "arrogante" nesta semana por eurodeputados.

Para governos de países que enfrentam crises profundas, essa disparidade entre a Alemanha exportadora e suas economias cada vez menos competitivas é o que está ameaçando a Europa. Por anos, o saldo positivo na balança comercial alemã foi garantida graças ao consumo de espanhóis, gregos e irlandeses, hoje altamente endividados.

Em entrevista à revista alemã Spiegle, o economista Nouriel Roubini também alertou que a estratégia de Berlim de crescimento "não funcionará no médio prazo". "Esse modelo exportador não funcionará nem para a Alemanha nem para a Europa", afirmou o economista, que acusa Berlim de ter aprofundado a crise de seus vizinhos. 

Exportações alemãs se recuperam puxadas pela economia chinesa

Germany: On a roll

By Daniel Schäfer in Frankfurt

Published: August 15 2010 20:31 | Last updated: August 15 2010 20:31

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the ready: galvanised steel at ThyssenKurpp's Duisburg works. A boom in German industry’s order inflow is spurring a new winingness by companies to invest in upgrading their facilities

When Peter Löscher, Siemens’ chief executive, told the Financial Times in May last year that Germany would emerge from the recession to “spearhead a fresh wave of industrial revolution”, it seemed a rash prediction. At the time, Europe’s largest exporting country was in the middle of its deepest recession in more than 60 years.

Just 15 months on, Mr Löscher’s vision is becoming reality. The German export engine has surged back to life and is leading the continent out of the crisis, emerging faster from the downturn than many of its neighbours. Germany’s gross domestic product jumped 2.2 per cent in the second quarter from the preceding three months, taking the front rank in the eurozone. Friday’s data prompted several economists to predict that its economy will grow by at least 3 per cent this year.

Production levels, exports and profits are rising rapidly in important sectors such as machinery, cars and chemical goods, while unemployment has reached the lowest level in several years. The strength of this “XL upswing” – as Rainer Brüderle, economics minister, calls it – is such that he clichéd German angst has evaporated. German businesses are basking in a summer optimism that contrasts sharply not only with the country’s oft-seen pessimism but also with the dark mood in the US and the uncertainty that pervades other parts of Europe. Business confidence in Germany last month reached its highest in three years.

Yet there remain risks that threaten to derail the upswing – and not only because some sectors of the economy might be in danger of overheating. Growth is likely to slow in the remainder of the year, when government austerity measures kick in and companies’ inventory restocking is expected to wane. But many executives are even more concerned that Germany’s “new economic miracle” – as the domestic media call it – could really be a Chinese economic miracle.

In large parts of the economy, from premium cars to textile machines, demand is being heavily driven by China – raising questions over the extent of the country’s dependence on a market whose growth has already started to slow.

For now, however, German industrialists have plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Many plants are running at full speed again, some companies are expanding capacity and many are re-hiring contract workers. Orders in the engineering sector, Germany’s economic backbone that includes industrial giants such as Siemens as well as swaths of midsized family-owned companies, shot up by 32 per cent year-on-year in the first six months, following a drop of 38 per cent in the past year.

The order boom is spurring a new willingness to invest. After several years in which companies squirreled away most of their cash, many are ready to replace old equipment and expand their businesses. SAP, the world’s largest business software maker, says its German sales grew at a double-digit rate in the first half of this year. “If you think about a company like SAP with such a mature brand and a well-founded marketplace growing at that rate, it speaks to the depth of the turnaround,” says Bill McDermott, co-chief executive.

Several large manufacturers – from Siemens to companies such as Audi, the premium carmaker that is part of Volkswagen – are heading towards record profits this year, driven by a weak euro and a strong position in Asia. Daimler, Audi and BMW all reported record operating profit margins of more than 9 per cent in their luxury automotive businesses in the second quarter, thanks to rapidly rising demand for their high-margin top-class models but also helped by hefty cost cuts initiated in the past few years.

“Germany is benefiting from its industrial strength and export power,” Siemens’ Mr Löscher says, pointing to the country’s technological edge in growth areas such as infrastructure and green products. Industrial products such as cars, machinery and medical devices make up almost one-quarter of gross domestic product – much more than in most European countries. Germany sold goods worth $13,681 (€10,728, £8,777) per head of population last year, far ahead of France and twice as much as third-ranking Italy.

One reason is Germany’s openness to the world, says Hermann Simon, chairman of Simon Kucher & Partners, a German consultancy. “Germans go on holiday everywhere around the globe, whereas other Europeans tend to stay at home and do not get to know the world,” he observes.

Certainly, German industrial groups were often faster than others in tapping markets outside Europe. VW entered China more than 30 years ago, for instance, sowing the seeds for today’s market dominance by the multi-branded carmaker. Some of the larger family-owned Mittelstand engineering companies, such SMS Group, a producer of metal processing machines, have been present in China for many decades.

Mr Simon says German specialisation in high-quality market niches makes a lot of its industrial products indispensable: “Companies can postpone such investments but they cannot omit them altogether.” He points to Trumpf, the laser-cutting machine maker, saying: “If all machines made by Trumpf were suddenly to disappear, the global economy would simply collapse, as all sophisticated metal processing companies would have to close down their businesses.”

T  he twin focus on market niches and exports – even small family-owned engineering companies often sell more than 80 per cent of their production abroad – has left German industry exposed to an amount of volatility that runs contrary to the country’s stability-loving mentality. Ulrich Reifenhäuser, owner of the eponymous plastics machinery maker, says of his experience in the past two years: “First we went into a brutal tailspin and now we are in the middle of a steep climb.”

But after strengthening their competitiveness and radically improving their workforce flexibility in the past decade, most companies were able to cope with the roller coaster ride. Many businesses held on to their core staff during the crisis, helped by their own flexibility measures as well as a government-sponsored short-time working scheme where the state chips in for as much as two-thirds of wages lost when working hours are reduced.

“Germany did a great job during the crisis. The consensus between employers and employees allowed managers to concentrate on business,” says Axel Heitmann, chief executive of Lanxess, a large speciality chemicals company. The main pillar of this consensus has been that trade unions such as IG Metall were willing to focus on job security instead of demanding pay rises during the crisis.

This hibernation strategy came at the expense of a temporary drop in labour productivity, but it has paid off because it enabled companies to accelerate swiftly out of the slump. Reifenhäuser is a typical example. When orders more than halved in 2009, the group shed its 120 temporary workers and put large numbers of its 1,200 permanent staff on short-time working. As business came back forcefully this year, the group rapidly re-hired temps and switched back to full production and in some areas even special extra shifts.

While the short-time working scheme known as Kurzarbeit will cost the German state €6bn ($8bn, £5bn) this year alone, it helped to keep unemployment at a low level throughout the crisis. This supported the population’s willingness to spend money, although consumption stayed at its usual low level. In July, unemployment stood at 7.6 per cent, one of the lowest rates in years.

 

Flexibility measures such as Kurz­arbeit helped deal with most of the supply problems that had been dreaded at the initial stages of this apparently V-shaped recovery. While a few smaller suppliers struggled to meet demand in the first half of the year, most companies were quick to reinstate capacity. But some of the most cyclical areas, such as microchips, remain a problem. Infineon, the chipmaker, is for instance lagging behind on its production. In June, Audi and Porsche came close to having to halt car production in some of their plants after Harman Becker, their supplier of car stereos, ran out of the chips its units needed.

“Such a fast recovery cannot go without friction. We had massive problems at the beginning but now production is running smoothly again,” says Mr Reifenhäuser.

But what worries many industrialists is how lopsided the growth is towards Asia and other emerging economies such as Brazil, bringing a large part of corporate Germany into a dangerous dependence on the Chinese market in particular. “Without China we would hardly have seen this recovery – it’s a frightening trend,” says Hannes Hesse, head of the VDMA engineering association, adding that demand for textile machines is “almost exclusively” Chinese.

The position is similar, if not quite so extreme, for carmakers. VW calls China its second home market but it really is its first: it sells more cars there than in Germany. Daimler says 20–30 per cent of its sales growth comes from China. But Dieter Zetsche, chief executive, rejects suggestions that it is becoming dependent on that market, saying: “We have a high profitability there but certainly do not have all our eggs in one basket.”

But few doubt that a slowdown in China would hit the German economy harder than others. A number of German industrialists are already warning that the second half of the year will be tougher. “There is no reason to become overly optimistic. . . We see a waning recovery in the US and Asia will grow more slowly in the second half,” says Jürgen Hambrecht, chief executive of BASF, the largest chemical maker in the world.

China’s gross domestic product growth slowed from 11.9 per cent to 10.3 per cent in the second quarter from the first, reflecting government efforts to restrict bank lending. A continued softening would threaten to derail Germany’s export boom at a time when government austerity measures in Europe are upsetting growth prospects in its own backyard.

“In western Europe and particularly in Germany, we expect demand to be weak in the second half of the year. And in China, there is also a chance for a soft cooling down in the second half,” says Hans Dieter Pötsch, VW’s chief financial officer.

But such warnings cannot spoil the summery optimism in Germany. Many companies take heart from their overflowing order books, which provide a cushion for a time when the economy will lose momentum. Siemens, for instance, reported an €89bn order backlog last month, the highest in its 163-year history.

“All over the place, we see a stabilisation of the global economy,” Mr Löscher says. “German companies are present on all international growth markets and can profit from this upswing.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95292e5a-a898-11df-86dd-00144feabdc0.html

Alemanha eurocética ou Alemanha oportunista e neoliberal?

02 mayo, 2010 - Lluís Bassets

El fracaso político del euro

En el principio siempre hay decisiones políticas. Políticas fueron las decisiones monetarias de Helmut Kohl y políticas son las indecisiones monetarias de Angela Merkel. El canciller de la unificación alemana tomó dos decisiones monetarias: fijó el cambio del marco oriental por marcos occidentales en la paridad de uno a uno hasta el límite de 4.000 y de dos orientales por uno occidental a partir de dicha cantidad; y luego accedió con el Tratado de Maastricht a que su país perdiera la moneda sobre la que se había construido el milagro alemán, a cambio de que el resto de Europa aceptara la unificación y sus consecuencias.

También fueron políticas las decisiones que se tomaron alrededor del euro. Sin una firme voluntad política de los países que querían incorporarse, encabezados por los dos grandes, Francia y Alemania, es decir, el presidente de la República Jacques Chirac y de nuevo el canciller Kohl, el euro habría quedado reducido a una unión monetaria franco-alemana, con la adición de Holanda, Bélgica y Luxemburgo. El propósito, netamente político, de los fundadores fue incorporar el máximo número de países, cumpliendo las reglas o criterios llamados de Maastricht naturalmente (pertenencia al sistema monetario europeo, limitación de los niveles de inflación, déficit y deuda, y convergencia de tipos de interés), pero con una cierta manga ancha, que permitió algunos apaños en las cuentas públicas, que en el caso de Grecia, incorporada algo más tarde, fueron, como se ha visto, escandalosos e incluso fraudulentos.

La nueva moneda nació con un problema político serio. No había gobierno económico ni departamento del Tesoro que funcionaran como interlocutores de las autoridades monetarias del Banco Central Europeo. Pero su aparición y consolidación llevó a presagiar unos futuros efectos políticos, que conducirían a solventar el problema de la gobernanza, a introducir criterios de armonización fiscal e incluso incrementos del presupuesto. No tan sólo no ha sucedido, sino que las cosas han ido en dirección contraria, justo cuando la moneda común supera ya su primera década de vida.

Angela Merkel arrastra ahora los pies y prefiere esperar a que vayan a las urnas los votantes de Renania Westfalia, país de 18 millones de habitantes y uno de los motores políticos germanos, antes que ayudar a Grecia, con sus 11 millones. Se escuda también en los reproches que pudiera hacerle su Tribunal Constitucional, siempre vigilante ante las cesiones de soberanía, en su momento con ocasión del euro y ahora con el Tratado de Lisboa. Pero sobre todo quiere convencer a sus conciudadanos de que ayudando a Grecia se ayudan a ellos mismos. Porque la peor consecuencia política de un euro sin gobierno político es que ha convertido a la europeísta Alemania en un nuevo socio euroescéptico.

http://blogs.elpais.com/lluis_bassets/2010/05/el-fracaso-político-del-euro.html

A crise do Euro

24/03/2010

Principais economistas alemães discutem a situação do euro

Thomas Tuma e Alexander Jung

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À medida que o euro perde o respeito que costumava inspirar, muita gente está começando a temer que a união monetária possa entrar em colapso. Em uma entrevista a “Der Spiegel”, os proeminentes economistas alemães Peter Bofinger e Joachim Starbatty discutem os méritos da moeda comum europeia, e dizem se a União Europeia deve ou não intervir na economia da Grécia e no destino do euro.

Spiegel: Senhores Bofinger e Starbatty, vocês acham que a criação do euro foi um erro?

Peter Bofinger: Não, claro que não. Atualmente nós vivemos em uma zona monetária que, apesar de tudo, é significativamente mais estável do que foram no passado as zonas monetárias do dólar e do iene. O euro trouxe crescimento e prosperidade à Europa.

Joachim Starbatty: Na verdade, o euro foi um erro que teve graves consequências específicas. Uma união monetária exige que os seus membros sigam as mesmas políticas e tenham produtividade similar. O chamado critério de convergência tinha como objetivo garantir que isso aconteceria. Mas – conforme os acontecimentos dramáticos na Grécia estão demostrando agora – não foi isso o que aconteceu.

Spiegel: Você sente hoje que a sua previsão se confirmou?

Starbatty: Infelizmente, os nossos medos tornaram-se uma realidade. A união monetária foi criada com uma dose real de auto-ilusão.

Bofinger: Desculpe, não entendi.

Starbatty: O euro nos foi apresentado como sendo um programa de modernização para a Europa, e também nos disseram que isso empurraria a comunidade europeia rumo à estabilidade. Mas, na realidade, a comunidade fragmentou-se e tornou-se uma entidade verdadeiramente instável.

Bofinger: Instável? O índice de inflação tem sido moderado, permanecendo em torno de 2% desde 1999, e este índice é significativamente menor do que aquele presenciado quando a Alemanha usava o marco. Nós temos um déficit de orçamento inferior ao dos norte-americanos, japoneses e britânicos. A nossa relação entre dívida e produto interno bruto também é mais reduzida do que a dos Estados Unidos e a do Japão. Não existe nenhum motivo pelo qual o euro deva ser criticado. A decisão de cria-lo foi inteligente e ponderada.

Spiegel: Sem nenhum problema?

Bofinger: É claro que a zona do euro atualmente dá a impressão de estar em uma situação um pouco pior. Mas isto era de se esperar, tendo em vista a tempestade pela qual passou a economia global. Mesmo assim, graças à moeda comum, não é mais possível, por exemplo, desfechar ataques especulativos contra moedas individuais. Isso elimina um fator problemático fundamental que no passado desestabilizou maciçamente os mercados.

Starbatty: Mas este é exatamente o problema! No passado, as taxas de câmbio funcionavam como uma válvula. Países individuais podiam controlar as suas economias permitindo que as suas moedas ganhassem ou perdessem valor. Agora, esse mecanismo de ajuste não funciona mais e, como resultado, um tipo completamente diferente de desequilíbrio emergiu. Atualmente existem dois blocos dentro da união monetária: um bloco de moeda forte no norte do continente e um de moeda fraca no sul. O norte robusto juntou forças com os países que desvalorizaram constantemente as suas moedas no decorrer das suas histórias. Basta ver o caso da lira italiana, por exemplo. Ao final da década de cinquenta, eu pagava 6,70 marcos alemães por mil liras italianas. A taxa de câmbio final foi menor do que um marco por mil liras.

Spiegel: O que aconteceria se essas velhas moedas fossem reintroduzidas amanhã na zona do euro?

Bofinger: Isso seria uma catástrofe. O marco alemão teria que passar por uma valorização significativa – eu diria que algo em torno de 10% a 20%. Tudo o que nós nos empenhamos tanto em conseguir em termos de competitividade desapareceria da noite para o dia. Haveria lamentos e ranger de dentes na Alemanha. E a Europa estaria cometendo um grave erro se retornasse ao regionalismo e ao nacionalismo durante esta fase de globalização crescente.

Starbatty: Eu enxergo as coisas de uma forma completamente diferente. O euro foi também apresentado aos cidadãos como sendo um instrumento para garantir a paz. Eu nunca fui capaz de entender tal argumento porque, se isto fosse de fato verdade, teríamos que abrir a união monetária para todos. Em vez disso, devido ao fracasso da moeda, nós estamos testemunhando agora como o nacionalismo surgiu originalmente. Bandeiras da União Europeia já foram queimadas na Grécia.

Spiegel: Mas teria sido melhor se todos os países da Europa tivessem mantido as suas próprias moedas?

Starbatty: Sim. Uma comunidade não pode funcionar quando é composta de parceiros desiguais que devem se comportar como iguais. Com o euro, a Alemanha criou uma vantagem competitiva artificial para si, o que nos permitiu conquistar mercados em todo o mundo. Mas isso também levou à acumulação de uma capacidade excessiva maciça nas nossas indústrias de exportação e, consequentemente, as companhias voltadas para a exportação no sudoeste do Estado alemão de Baden-Württemberg estão passando por problemas. A união monetária modificou a estrutura das economias de uma forma nada saudável.

Bofinger: Ah, o que é isso! Você não pode culpar o euro por esses desequilíbrios! A responsabilidade é, fundamentalmente, das políticas econômicas. Desde 1995, não houve quase nenhum aumento apreciável de salários na Alemanha, em parte como resultado da pressão provocada pelo aumento da quantidade de mão de obra terceirizada. Os políticos fizeram tudo para aliviar os empregadores do peso de ter que pagar contribuições previdenciárias porque nós caímos neste estranho pânico, acreditando que não éramos globalmente competitivos. Com as nossas políticas econômicas, nós enfatizamos demais e equivocadamente as exportações. Os irlandeses, os gregos e os espanhóis, por outro lado, enfatizaram demais a demanda doméstica.

Spiegel: Nos últimos dias, a ministra francesa das Finanças, Christine Lagarde, criticou repetidamente o superávit da balança comercial da Alemanha, alegando que ele é elevado se comparado ao dos outros países da União Europeia. Ela está certa ao fazer tais críticas?

Starbatty: Não. Eu creio que é estranho que Madame Lagarde esteja punindo os virtuosos, que sempre estiveram orientados para a estabilidade, e não os verdadeiros culpados.

Bofinger: Mas os alemães pecaram tanto quanto os espanhóis, por exemplo. Os espanhóis elevaram muito os seus salários, enquanto a Alemanha praticou a política oposta ao não elevar o poder de compra dos seus trabalhadores durante anos.

Starbatty: Mas, e daí? Isso fez com que tivéssemos sucesso. Foi algo que surgiu com o temor de que os empregos migrassem para o exterior. E a política de salários moderados da Alemanha fez com que o país passasse novamente a ser atraente para as companhias.

Bofinger: Você deveria olhar para isso de uma forma mais holística. Não teríamos sido capazes de aumentar as nossas exportações se os outros países tivessem se comportado como nós e não tivessem elevado a sua demanda durante uma década inteira. Na minha opinião, a união monetária é como um relacionamento: para funcionar de forma apropriada, os participantes do relacionamento têm que orientar o seu comportamento em direção ao bem comum. Se cada participante voltar-se apenas para o seu benefício próprio, isso gerará todos os tipos de crise de relacionamento que atualmente estamos experimentando.

Spiegel: Tais crises terminam ocasionalmente em divórcio. Será que isso seria uma opção válida para a Grécia, um membro da zona do euro, em algum momento no futuro?

Starbatty: Eu creio que essa medida é a que faria maior sentido. Os gregos deveriam deixar voluntariamente a união monetária e relançar a dracma. Se fizessem isso, eles exportariam mais e seriam capazes de substituir produtos estrangeiros por domésticos. Da mesma forma, os turistas viajariam para a Grécia, em vez de para a Turquia, porque essa seria uma alternativa mais barata.

Bofinger: Excluir a Grécia da União Europeia seria uma abordagem completamente equivocada. O problema da Grécia é a ineficiência em termos de finanças públicas. Isso é algo que pode ser corrigido. Em comparação com outros países, Atenas sempre coletou pouquíssimos impostos. O orçamento do governo não era sequer equilibrado nos anos prósperos, quando havia um forte crescimento econômico. Não é essa a maneira de se administrar um país. O governo da Grécia poderia, por exemplo, elevar a alíquota mais alta de impostos de 40%, o valor atual, para um patamar bem mais alto. Após a reunificação da Alemanha, quando Helmut Kohl era chanceler, a nossa alíquota tributária mais alta era de 56%.

Starbatty: E você acredita seriamente que isso ajudaria? Após essa abordagem, os gregos poupariam excessivamente, assim como os alemães fizeram no início da década de trinta, sob o então chanceler do Reich, Heinrich Brüning. Aquilo que você espera que os gregos façam resultaria em algo como Brüning ao quadrado. O problema real é que a Grécia no deveria ter sido aceita originalmente na união monetária. O país apresentou números adulterados, como sabem todos aqueles que leem jornais. E outros fizeram a mesma coisa. Mas as autoridades em Bruxelas, que temiam que os gregos anunciassem publicamente a fraude, disseram: “Vamos esquecer isso!”.

Bofinger: Mas hoje em dia tudo isso são águas passadas. Temos que lidar com a situação atual. No Conselho dos Especialistas, nós propusemos um pacto de consolidação, segundo o qual cada país teria que especificar uma rota integralmente verificável, rota esta que ele seguiria enquanto colocasse em ordem as suas finanças internas. Esta não seria uma solução apenas para a Grécia, mas para todos. Em troca, a comunidade teria que fornecer aos países problemáticos garantias de que estes seriam capazes de conseguir verbas nos mercados de capital a juros favoráveis, em vez de a índices extremamente elevados. É inaceitável que governos tenham passado os últimos anos gastando bilhões e bilhões de euros e acumulando dívidas para salvar os mercados financeiros, apenas para que os especuladores empurrassem os países para fora da união monetária.

Starbatty: Segundo a minha experiência, os especuladores só tem sucesso quando as promessas políticas divergem da realidade econômica, conforme ficou claro no caso da Grécia. Da mesma forma, quando se trata de assistência, eu creio que possuímos uma estrutura legal clara, segundo a qual nenhum Estado membro nem a união inteira podem ser responsabilizados pela dívida de um outro Estado membro.

Spiegel: Você está se referindo, é claro, à famosa cláusula de auxílio financeiro a países em crise.

Starbatty: Você, Bofinger, eliminaria esse princípio com uma canetada. Se ajudarmos a Grécia agora, estaremos abrindo um buraco sem fundo. Se isso acontecer, o euro estará em apuros maiores porque outros países esperarão ajuda. A união monetária transformar-se-ia em uma união de transferência monetária. Se isso acontecer, os meus antigos colegas e eu tomaremos novamente medidas legais.

Bofinger: Mas tal pacto restringir-se-ia a ajudar os países a ajudarem a si próprios. A ideia agora não é comprar títulos gregos. Em vez disso, nós devemos definir condições nítidas segundo as quais a Grécia e outros países receberão garantias. Mas, é preciso haver também uma opção para cancelar as garantias caso as regras não sejam obedecidas.

Starbatty: Pactos são escritos em papel, mas aquilo que é escrito nem sempre é necessariamente verdadeiro. O Pacto de Crescimento e Estabilidade para o euro era originalmente bem mais estrito, mas depois disso ele foi flexibilizado. Não há muito resultado quando pecadores falam sobre pecadores.

Spiegel: Mas a dívida governamental ainda está aumentando consideravelmente. Isso não eleva também o risco de inflação?

Starbatty: É isso que eu assumo. A inflação seria uma forma elegante de reduzir a dívida, e muitos acadêmicos estão discutindo esse cenário. Mas a situação se torna verdadeiramente problemática quando títulos de governo acabam perdendo a sua condição de porto seguro. Se a China ou o Japão chegar a esta conclusão e vender os seus títulos, poderá haver o estouro de uma bolha que seria mais perigosa do que qualquer outra bolha. Se isso acontecer, os mercados despencarão, e as taxas de juros dispararão.

Bofinger: Ah, Starbatty, os chineses não tem outra escolha a não ser comprarem títulos do Tesouro dos Estados Unidos. Caso contrário, eles teriam permitido que a sua moeda experimentasse uma valorização significativa, e eles seriam mais afetados do que qualquer outro país pela queda dos preços de títulos. Para a zona do euro, pelo menos, o que eu vejo como mais provável é o risco de deflação – em outras palavras, o risco de queda de preço em ambas as frentes. Se as pessoas estão começando agora a poupar de forma muito mais intensa, uma enorme pressão de queda surgirá inevitavelmente como um resultado disso.

Starbatty: Mas as pessoas não estão poupando. Em vez disso, os países estão se endividando além de qualquer limite. Se a economia da Alemanha continuar estagnada e os seus 1,3 milhão de trabalhadores de curta jornada não encontrarem novamente empregos normais, os déficits governamentais voltarão a subir, e as expectativas inflacionárias aumentarão.

Bofinger: Dívidas governamentais não conduzem automaticamente a inflação, conforme tem sido demonstrado pelos acontecimentos no Japão no decorrer das duas últimas décadas. O Banco Central Europeu jamais cogitará utilizar a inflação para eliminar a dívida. E mesmo se a população começasse a gastar o seu dinheiro devido ao medo da inflação, pelo menos as fábricas finalmente operariam novamente a plena capacidade. Em outras palavras, isso também não seria nenhuma tragédia.

Spiegel: A turbulência nos mercados financeiros também criou um problema de credibilidade para as pessoas com a profissão de vocês. Praticamente nenhum economistas previu os problemas fatais que enfrentaríamos.

Starbatty: É verdade. Muitos de nós confiamos excessivamente em números. Mas modelos matemáticos não são capazes de descrever realidades complexas.

Bofinger: Ah, quanto a isso eu concordo completamente com você. Temos que entender novamente que a economia não é uma ciência exata.

Spiegel: Vocês dois acreditam de fato que o euro ainda estará em vigor daqui a cinco anos?

Bofinger: Tenho certeza que sim. Toda crise cria uma oportunidade, e isso deve se aplicar também a esta crise especial de relacionamento. Mas para isso é necessário, no entanto, que as autoridades em Bruxelas não fiquem trocando acusações e que elas finalmente elaborem uma abordagem conjunta e coordenada.

Starbatty: Isso não é suficiente. Se salvarmos a pele dos gregos agora, outros países membros também farão pressões para a obtenção de assistência financeira. E neste caso a união monetária desmoronará. A única coisa que não está clara é quando isso acontecerá.

Bofinger: Então você provavelmente concordaria com o grande economista britânico John Maynard Keynes, que afirmou: “No longo prazo, todos estaremos mortos”. Neste caso, é claro que não restará ninguém para analisar os fatos.

Starbatty: Temo que as coisas não demorarão tanto tempo assim no caso do euro.

Spiegel: Senhor Bofinger, senhor Starbatty, obrigado pela entrevista.

http://noticias.uol.com.br/midiaglobal/derspiegel/2010/03/24/principais-economistas-alemaes-discutem-a-situacao-do-euro.jhtm

Nasceu, e viveu na Alemanha, não fala turco, mas foi expulso para a Turquia

SPIEGEL ONLINE

12/04/2009 04:13 PM

Victim of Immigration Policy

The German Forced to Become a Turk

By Jochen-Martin Gutsch

Mohammad Eke was born and grew up in the German city of Essen. Until authorities found out that his parents had entered the country illegally, Germany was his home. Then Eke was deported to Turkey, even though he'd never visited the country and didn't speak the language. It's just another run-of-the-mill case of German immigration policy in action.

The young man sits with his bag in Istanbul's airport, as he often does when he doesn't know what to do with himself or his time.

The bag holds two towels, two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts, a pair of shoes, a jacket and his toiletries. It also contains a Turkish dictionary, a folder containing documents from a German Office of Alien Affairs and a bottle of antidepressant pills, which he needs to fall asleep. The bag is the size of a carry-on bag, and he could easily be mistaken for a tourist visiting Istanbul for a couple of days. Such tourists are eager to see the sights and do the things tourists do here: see the Bosporus, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque or a game of Fenerbahçe, the city's famed football team -- and then return home.

In fact, there is probably nothing Mohammad Eke would like more than to go home -- to board an airplane, take off and arrive at his destination. But, for him, that would be difficult and perhaps even impossible. Going home would mean returning to Germany, where officials have spent a lot of time and effort over the last few years trying to get rid of him and send him to Istanbul.

When they finally succeeded, it was Aug. 6, a hot summer day. Sometime between two and three in the morning, Eke walked out of his cell at a deportation center in Büren, a town in northwestern Germany. He hadn't slept. During the nine months he spent in custody pending deportation, he had dreaded this moment -- while at the same time longing for it.

Then, he was handcuffed and driven a short distance to Düsseldorf's airport, where he was searched -- his clothing, his bag, his body. Then he was driven out to an aircraft so that he could board it before the other passengers. He sat down in the window seat in row 29. He was joined in his row by two federal German police officers who were accompanying him during his deportation. And just in case there were any problems during the flight -- such as a suicide attempt, perhaps -- there was a doctor sitting in the seat in front of him.

At approximately 8 a.m., Turkish Airlines flight TK 1530 took off for Istanbul on a normally scheduled flight. Eke watched Germany's industrial Ruhr region slip away beneath him, and he thought back to the only time he had traveled abroad, for a weekend in The Hague with his football team. He was a child then, but now he was 21 and sitting in an airplane for the first time.

The only reason he was taking the first real journey of his life was because he was being deported to Turkey. He had never set foot in Turkey. He didn't speak any Turkish.

Eke remained quiet throughout the flight, looking every bit the tourist among tourists.

A Turkish police officer was waiting at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. The escorts from Germany disappeared, and then Eke spent a number of hours in two police stations. Eventually, he was handed a document that he couldn't read, though it seemed important.

Then he was free to go.

By the time Eke left the police station, it was already dark. The only things he had on him were his travel bag and the €50 ($75) he had been given as a deportee.

For the first few weeks, he spent nights in a mosque on the airport grounds. He hid in a corner and slept on a carpet that smelled musty from the feet of the people who prayed there. During the day, he walked over to the departure hall and watched the travelers pulling their trolley cases past the glass booths of the Turkish border officials. He went to a mobile phone shop that offered free Internet use to keep up with German football scores and write e-mails to his girlfriend back home in Essen. Otherwise, he simply waited -- either for a surprise turn of events or for someone to come along to tell him that it had all been a mistake.

What else could it be, he thought. He wasn't a criminal. He was born in Germany, and he had spent his entire life there. Germany was his home, and German was his native language -- German with an accent from the Ruhr region. How on Earth could they deport someone as German as he was?

That question still haunts him, and all the time. But what Eke lacks is a good answer, something that will make his story make sense. But perhaps there is no explanation, at least not one that makes sense. And if there is, it's typically German -- complicated.

A Story That Never Should Have Happened

The immigration office in Essen is housed in a new, cube-shaped building. Jörg Stratenwerth, its director, sits in an office on the fifth floor. He is an amiable, heavyset, 38-year-old man who has spent his entire career working for this agency. He was promoted to head the office a few months ago, and there is now a file sitting on his desk that he will use to help explain the case of Mohammad Eke. Two clerks are also sitting in on the meeting, as is Detlef Feige, the spokesman of the city of Essen. Four men for one story, and a story that is neither particularly significant nor particularly confusing. In fact, by the end of the meeting, you might have been left wondering why this story ever happened.

Stratenwerth opens the file. It all began 21 years ago, on May 30, 1988, when Mohammad Eke was born. He had a different name then: Mohammad Ahmed. During his childhood, he was always told that his parents came to Germany from Lebanon before he was born, after fleeing the civil war there. Since they had no passports, they were all classified as refugees with "unresolved status." Mohammad Ahmed went to kindergarten and then school. He played in the local football club, and he was an FC Bayern fan. He was a Lebanese from Essen whose German was better than his Arabic.

In 2001, Mohammad's parents received a letter from the immigration office. The letter stated that officials had discovered evidence that they had provided false information about their origins when they immigrated to Germany.

Stratenwerth pulls a piece of paper out of the file. He speaks quickly, and his sentences are filled with the flotsam of data and legalese. But when all the important details are filtered out, Eke's story boils down to this: In 2001, immigration offices across the country launched investigations, and special police commissions had been formed to find so-called "fake" Lebanese. The authorities suspected that a few thousand Turks had come to Germany in the 1980s as part of a large wave of refugees claiming to be victims of the civil war ravaging Lebanon. In the first few years of the new millennium, the immigration offices conducted DNA tests to ascertain degrees of kinship and searched for evidence in Turkish birth registries. In the case of Mohammad Eke, the officials found what they were looking for: his parents were part of the group they had uncovered.

DNA tests were done, and the results showed that they were not Lebanese. Instead, the test indicated that they were from the remote Mardin Province in southeastern Turkey, where Arabic is spoken. "The parents presented Lebanese papers," Stratenwerth says, "but they were amateurish forgeries."

Grasping for an Identity

Sitting in a café, Eke calls this all "the lie." He spits out the words like poison. The lie divided his life into two identities. Suddenly he was a Turk. Mohammad Ahmed became Mohammad Eke. He was ashamed of his parents and ashamed to face his friends. How could he explain to them that he had lived with a fake background, in a Lebanese fairytale? The lie began to pervade his life. And it quickly and inexorably set in motion the series of events that would end with his being stranded here in Istanbul.

Eke speaks in a quiet voice. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and his face is the face of a boy. "I'm confused," he says. "I don't know what or who I am. I don't know whether I'm a Sunni or a Shiite. I have no history -- or at least not one I'm aware of." His father, he says, never told him where the family came from, not even after the lie had been exposed. He remained clueless about his family's past. Instead, Eke withdrew into the only thing that seemed indisputable to him. "In my heart, I am German," he says. But that has caused problems for him, too. He has no former life. But he doesn't have a new life yet, either.

For example, Eke has been in Istanbul for more than three months, but he has yet to explore much of the city. He rarely goes into downtown Istanbul because, as he says, it's too dangerous there -- too many thieves and swindlers. He's noticed that the kebabs are drier than they are in Germany and that they have "less meat and less lettuce." Likewise, Eke finds it hard to deal with the Turkish mentality. The Turks are stingy and unfriendly, he says -- though he'll admit that this impression might have something to do with the fact that he doesn't speak Turkish. At any rate, he says, the best place in Istanbul is the airport. "There's Internet here, so I can distract myself," Eke says. "And everything is monitored."

From Would-be Deportee to Refugee

In October 2002, German officials refused to extend Eke's residence permit, which meant that he was now legally required to leave the country, as were his parents and siblings. The first attempt to deport the family came in April 2005. It failed, because the parents weren't home that day; instead, they were at a family gathering in Bremen. After that, the father disappeared for several months. The mother was overwhelmed, and the immigration office obtained a court order to appoint a guardian for her six underage children. The authorities were closing in.

On Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, police surrounded the house again. This time, though, everything went according to plan. The parents and the younger siblings were taken into custody and deported to Turkey. By chance, however, Mohammad had spent the night at the house of his older brother. The next morning, he came home to an empty house. His family was gone.

Frightened and confused, Eke thought about his options. The good news was that he was still in Germany. The bad news was that he was 17-years-old and, as of a few hours, parentless. He decided to go to the immigration office, where he expected them to be waiting for him. And perhaps, he reasoned, they would give him a chance because he had missed his family's deportation and somehow stayed behind, because he was born in Essen, after all, and really just a German boy. At least that's the way he saw it.

At the immigration agency, Eke and his court-appointed guardian were sitting in the office of a clerk when they were told that he could not be deported -- at least not right away -- because he was a minor and his parents' exact whereabouts were unknown. Instead, he would be placed in Essen's Hermann Friebe House, a home for refugees. Now he would be Mohammad Eke, institutionalized child.

'Integration Achievement'

At that point, says Stratenwerth, the head of Essen's immigration agency, nothing had been decided. Nothing at all. Under certain conditions, though, Eke could have stayed in Germany. But that's not how Eke sees it. "Of course," he says, "he was more or less required to leave the country. That much is completely clear."

But, after spending his entire life in Germany, wasn't Eke really a German, a de facto native, so to speak? Were 17 years not enough?

Stratenwerth shakes his head. It's claiming a false identity, he says. And under German law, Stratenwerth explains, Eke can be held responsible for his parents' lie.

This is the point at which Eke's story becomes a legal matter -- and even a matter of government policy. The life of Mohammad Eke is now measured against the "public interest to regulate the immigration of foreigners," to quote a later court decision on the Eke case.

Stratenwerth flips through the file. He has never met Eke but in the end, he says, his is nothing more than a run-of-the-mill case. There are about 1,800 similar cases in Essen alone, he adds, of Turkish parents falsely claiming that they were Lebanese when they first entered the country -- and of children who grew up in Germany and spent their first 10, 15, 20 years in the country. Each of these cases ends with the question: Can they be allowed to stay, or do they have to go?

Stratenwerth says that everything depends on what he calls "integration achievement," which he sees as the intent behind Germany's Residence Act. "The more someone is integrated," he says, "the greater his or her changes are." In cases where individuals are well-integrated, deportation can be classified as legally unacceptable. It is a discretionary decision, though, and one with which immigration authorities have a certain degree of latitude.

In the end, this meant that Eke had to take an examination of sorts -- an integration test, so to speak. But it was a test he wouldn't be able to pass.

Granted, Eke has a few legal blemishes on his file. He had driven without a license; he had illegally altered a moped; and he had been convicted for theft and embezzlement after selling a borrowed Playstation for €70 ($104). But none of these were all that shocking or more than your average youthful indiscretions. And as Stratenwerth says: "None of this stood in the way." Instead, Eke was told to abide by his guardian's instructions. He was instructed to live at the refugee facility and go to school. By doing so, the authorities reasoned, he would be demonstrating his "integration achievement."

The Final Hurrah

After a few days, officials at the Hermann Friebe House reported that Eke was missing. As he puts it, he didn't want to be an institutionalized child. After that, he did what he was told and participated in a program called "Training and Employment for Adolescent Asylum Seekers." But he stopped attending after six months, and he also broke off contact with his guardian. On June 9, 2006, a few days after his 18th birthday, the immigration office noted that his whereabouts were now unknown and issued a warrant for his arrest. He was now a legal adult, but one that was illegal and eligible for deportation.

In retrospect, Eke admits, it might've been a mistake. But, at the time, it seemed like his only option. He didn't trust the immigration authorities, the same authorities who had deported his parents and siblings. And he didn't trust his guardian, either.

For the next two years, Eke stayed off the radar. He lived with friends in Essen and then moved in with his sister in Bremen, who has a German passport. He played football in various clubs and earned a little money by giving lessons to children. He likes to tell the story of how he played professionally with Rot-Weiss Essen, a local football club, with Mesut Özil -- a fellow Turk and a member of the German national team today.

In the late afternoon of Nov. 7, 2008, Eke gave up. The police had surrounded his brother's auto repair shop in Essen. Eke ran to the emergency exit hoping it would be his last chance to get away. But when he opened the door, there were two police officers waiting outside with weapons drawn.

"I was almost glad when they caught me," Eke says. "I thought: Now everything will be straightened out. I really thought they would say: 'It was our mistake' and 'Of course you'll get another chance.'"

What Exactly Constitutes Integration?

In fact, Eke still seems surprised. He opens his bag and pulls out a few documents: references from the German football clubs he had played with, a letter from the petitions committee of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, a certificate showing that he had attended an industrial placement program at BMW facilities in Essen, and the boarding pass from his August deportation flight. The documents are now little more than yellowing pieces of paper, testaments to his unsteady German life.

Eke left secondary school after ninth grade. His parents hardly speak any German, and they paid little attention to the education of their 11 children. When Eke is asked what his parents did for a living, how they made money, he says, "with nothing." It was a large family that survived on welfare. Under these conditions, how could Eke be expected to score well on any "integration achievement" test?

When asked whether he believes that he's integrated, he says that he doesn't exactly know what the term means. Still, the fact is that, in Germany, no one really knows what it means. Can integration really be measured? Eke speaks German like a German. He isn't a criminal, and he isn't a bad guy. That, so to speak, is his integration achievement. Is it necessary to ask more of him? Or is there also such a thing as a German integration achievement? Is there a level of responsibility that someone must achieve after having lived in Germany for 21 years?

On Nov. 8, 2008, Eke was taken to the deportation center in Büren. He spent the first few weeks in a six-man cell with three bunk beds. After two months, he was permitted to work as a cleaner in the detention facility. He was having trouble sleeping, so the in-house doctor wrote him a prescription for antidepressants. When his hair occasionally fell out in dark clumps, both the doctor and Eke attributed it to stress.

Arguing His Case in Court

Twice during his nine-month incarceration, Eke was taken to the Turkish Consulate. But, on both occasions, he refused to apply for a Turkish passport, arguing that he was "born in Germany and am therefore a German citizen." His sister in Bremen hired attorneys, who filed a lawsuit against the government's deportation efforts. At this point, he was hoping that the German courts would come to his rescue.

But that wasn't in his cards. In a tersely worded ruling dated Jan. 14, 2009, an administrative court in Gelsenkirchen, near Essen, wrote: "The claimant's consciously illegal stay in Germany after his disappearance already suggests a lack of integration because it shows that the claimant intends to make his integration into the German legal order dependent on his interests." The judge also ruled "that it is in keeping with the need to fairly balance the public interest in regulating the immigration of foreigners against the claimant's private interest in remaining in Germany that the claimant return to Turkey."

Subsequently, Eke's lawyers filed an appeal with the administrative appeals court of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. On June 5, the appeal was denied. The judges argued that there was no evidence of Eke's being rooted in "German society" to a degree that would "make deportation to Turkey seem unacceptable." Besides, the judges wrote in their decision, "through his illegal presence in Germany since June 2006, the claimant has demonstrated his ability to cope with difficult living situations."

Eke had run up against a wall. He filed an appeal with a commission responsible for adjudicating hardship cases, but it also was denied. On July 9, the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany's supreme legal body, decided not to hear Eke's constitutional complaint. Now 21, Eke had exhausted his legal options in Germany. The only people left who could have prevented his deportation were Jörg Stratenwerth and the immigration officials in Essen. But they didn't.

Stretching the Boundaries of Reasonable

Stratenwerth closes the Eke file. He has been working for the immigration authority for almost 15 years, and he has witnessed all of the German debates on integration, abuse of asylum privileges, Turkey's accession to the European Union, double citizenship, a German green card and mainstream culture. These days, Germany defines itself as a country of immigration. This perception might reflect reality -- and it might just be little more than wishful thinking. Stratenwerth isn't sure. He doesn't make the laws, he says, he just enforces them. He did his job correctly, he adds, as he looks out the window at the fall foliage.

"The chance was there," says Stratenwerth. "His mistake was to drop out of the training program and disappear. Now he has to deal with the consequences."

If you follow the logic, it would seem that Eke failed to live up to an expectation that he grow up more quickly than normal -- something which a German youngster from a similar background would never have been expected to do. Moreover, that German youngster would certainly not have suffered the same consequences as Eke for failing to pass the test.

Stratenwerth is open to discussing most issues, including the question of who is responsible for Mohammad Eke. Is it Germany, the country where he was born, or Turkey, a country he had never even visited beforehand? "Legally speaking, Turkey is responsible for him," says Stratenwerth, who holds a legal degree. "From an emotional standpoint," he adds, "perhaps he belongs in Germany. But under international law, he's Turkish."

Perhaps Eke could get a job, Stratenwerth suggests, in an attempt to look on the bright side of things, as if that would make everything better. "With his language qualifications, his German and Arabic," Stratenwerth says, "he has excellent job prospects in Turkey." A return to Germany, on the other hand, could be difficult. He could marry a German woman or someone with the right legal status. "But before returning to Germany," Stratenwerth adds, "he would have to pay back the costs incurred by his deportation." In Eke's case, these costs could be quite steep. There's the nine months he was in detention. And then there was the airfare for himself, the two police officers and the doctor. And then, of course, the costs of the medical reports. "It'll certainly come to about €20,000 ($30,000)," Stratenwerth figures.

Foreign at Home

Mehtap Sabah, Eke's 23-year-old girlfriend, says she would be willing to marry him. She is a petite girl with a German high-school diploma, Turkish parents and a German passport. "€20,000?" she asks. "How are we supposed to come up with that kind of money?" Sabah is in her second year of an apprenticeship to become a tax accountant's assistant. In August, shortly after Eke was deported, she went to see him in Istanbul. It was a strange visit. As they walked through the streets, she served as his interpreter. She also talked about the beauty of the city, the sea, the warm climate -- and soon she felt like his Turkish tour guide, as well. But all Eke could say was: "I feel lost here."

Eke is her first love. She could join him in Turkey, but she doesn't want to live there. Germany is her home, she says. Sometimes, when she compares his life with hers, she sees no difference between the two. Both of them were born and raised in Essen. But she received a German passport at some point, while Eke was deported.

At moments like this, despite the fact that it is her home, Germany must seem like a mysterious, inscrutable country to someone like Sabah.

Lost

Back at Istanbul's airport, Eke is thinking about where he'll sleep tonight. He has spent the last few weeks in Esenyurt, a neighborhood in Istanbul where he had been working at a small bakery during the day, dusting off the flour from pita bread. He lived in the apartment of Shekmus, a baker who spoke a little Arabic. It was musty and dark in the apartment, and they slept on dirty mattresses. But it wasn't bad, Eke says. At least he had a place to stay. But then he was told that the bakery was going to close soon because sales were poor. Perhaps it was true. Or perhaps they just didn't need an employee from Germany to dust off the flour from their pita bread, particularly one who didn't even speak Turkish.

Eke hasn't spoken with his parents since they were deported in September 2005. He can't forgive them for lying. For practical reasons, he now has a Turkish ID card. But he doesn't have a Turkish passport. As he sees it, doing so would mean taking another step into a Turkish life, a life he has still successfully managed to keep his distance from.

If marriage is his only option for returning to Germany, Eke says he'll do it. Marriage, at 21-years-old, just to return to the place where you've always lived.

He gets up. It is almost midnight, and he is thinking about spending the night at the baker's apartment. "It takes about two or three weeks to get to know Turkey, to see all the sights," says Eke. He sounds like a tourist.

He walks through the arrivals hall at the airport, not quite sure where he's going. He's a young man with a bag in his hand.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

URL:

• http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,665060,00.html

Acordo Rússia-Alemanha para gasoduto que não passe pela Europa Oriental

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pipeline

Posted by Alexandros Petersen in categories EU on November 10th, 2009

Rügen is best known as a popular German tourist destination. But now the Baltic Sea island has taken on a new role as staging point for an energy project that is as ambitious as it is controversial: the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. Next spring the first pipeline segments will likely be dropped to the sea floor in a line that will wind through Russian, Finish, Swedish, Danish and German waters—conspicuously avoiding the Baltic states and Poland.

This is because the Nord Stream project is part of an exclusionary agreement between Moscow and Berlin—nicknamed in circumvented Warsaw the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,” after the 1939 Soviet-Nazi deal to carve up Poland. It would have been much cheaper to build an overland pipeline through Eastern Europe, but the purpose of Nord Stream from the beginning was to bypass countries Moscow still considers to be part of its sphere of influence.

Russia’s geopolitical message here is clear: It doesn’t trust the new EU member states as transit countries or even as energy consumers and is willing to incur enormous costs to bypass them. The other message—or implied threat—is that Nord Stream will allow the Kremlin to cut off gas deliveries to Eastern Europe through current pipelines without reducing energy supplies to Germany. But what sort of message does Germany, a fellow EU member, intend to send to its neighbors?

Nord Stream was championed by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who now serves as one of its executives. From within her previous coalition government, current Chancellor Angela Merkel lobbied successfully for EU endorsement of the project even though the pipeline consortium is registered in Switzerland and controlled by Russia’s Gazprom. Of the dozens of companies involved in the pipeline’s construction, not one is from the Baltics, Central or Eastern Europe.

Germany’s recent election results produced a ripple of hope among the countries on Russia’s periphery. With the traditionally pro-Moscow Social Democratic Party out of the governing coalition, would Mrs. Merkel perhaps seek to change the terms of the Nord Stream agreement and push Russia to alter the route so that the pipeline would cross the waters or territories of Eastern EU members? Perhaps she would lobby Moscow to include also East European companies in the Nord Stream consortium? At least, it was hoped, Berlin would throw its weight behind the Nabucco pipeline, which seeks to improve Central and Eastern Europe’s energy security with the help of Caspian and Middle Eastern gas. After all, Germany’s RWE is part of the Nabucco consortium and Mr. Schröder’s pro-EU former foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, is now a lobbyist for the project.

Recent progress on Nord Stream, however, has dashed those hopes. The Nordic countries had until now delayed the project’s approval, raising environmental concerns, which most interpreted as unease about the pipeline’s geopolitical implications. Last Thursday, though, Finland and Sweden—which holds the European Union presidency until the end of the year—joined Denmark in signing off on the project. It is this political momentum that has spurred the rush to get pipeline segments out to Rügen and other staging points. The very realistic prospect that construction on Moscow’s pet project might begin early next year is a symbolic blow to those seeking to reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Russian gas. Most of all, it is a blow to any semblance of EU unity on energy security. Russia’s neighbors, both within and without the EU, are already reeling from a sense of Euro-Atlantic abandonment following Washington’s “reset” policy toward Russia and the EU’s lackluster outreach to its Eastern neighbors.

It would be unrealistic to expect Berlin to change tack on Nord Stream so late in the game. But a newly re-elected Angela Merkal should carefully consider the foreign policy messages that come with laying pipe on the Baltic Sea floor.

In order to reassure fellow EU members and the institution as a whole, Berlin would do well to support what the European Commission considers its “strategic priority”: The so-called Southern Corridor, which includes Nabucco and several smaller pipeline projects. As a European heavyweight, Germany’s mere rhetorical and diplomatic support would go a long way in encouraging EU energy unity. Most importantly, it would send the message to Moscow that its “divide and conquer” energy policy has its limits.

This post was previously published in the Wall Street Journal.

http://blogs.euobserver.com/petersen/2009/11/10/the-molotov-ribbentrop-pipeline/

E o livre mercado, como fica?

Alemania pide ayuda a EE UU para agilizar la venta de Opel

AGENCIAS - Berlín - 24/08/2009

El ministro alemán de Exteriores, Frank Walter Steinmeier, ha pedido ayuda a su colega estadounidense, Hillary Clinton, en el proceso de venta de Opel, filial alemana de General Motors. El fabricante estadounidense, que salió de la suspensión de pagos en julio, ha vuelto a retrasar una decisión respecto a la venta de Opel. La canciller alemana, Angela Merkel, aseguró ayer que se necesita una decisión urgente para el futuro de la compañía europea.

Durante una conversación telefónica de 20 minutos ayer, Steinmeier pidió a Clinton que presionase al responsable del Tesoro estadounidense, Tim Geithner, para que defienda la oferta del grupo austrocanadiense Magna, que aspira a controlar el 55% de Opel. Así lo revela el rotativo alemán Rheinische Post en su edición de hoy. El ministro alemán dejó claro a Clinton que Berlín aportará sus avales para la operación sólo si el comprador es Magna y no el inversor financiero belga RHJ International.

Merkel lamentó que aún no se haya tomado una decisión. "Necesitamos una solución urgente, por los trabajadores y la situación económica de Opel", subrayó en una entrevista a la cadena de televisión alemana ZDF. La canciller atribuyó ese retraso de General Motors a un conflicto de intereses. "Magna ha hecho una oferta muy buena que convierte a General Motors en un accionista minoritario y podría haber voces que quisieran que eso no ocurriera", atacó.

54.000 trabajadores

Opel emplea a 54.000 trabajadores en las distintas fábricas europeas, entre ellas la de Figueruelas (Zaragoza), que cuenta con 7.500 trabajadores. Aunque esta planta fabricará el nuevo Opel Meriva a partir de 2010, el futuro preocupa a las autoridades españolas ante la incertidumbre sobre los próximos propietarios de la compañía.

El comité de empresa de Opel exige una decisión rápida de General Motors, sobre la venta a uno de los candidatos interesados. "La casa matriz debe asumir su responsabilidad y consensuar una solución con el Gobierno alemán", señaló el presidente del comité, Klaus Franz. "La indecisión de la compañía ha acabado con la paciencia de los trabajadores", añadió. Los trabajadores de Opel apuestan por el grupo Magna, candidato favorecido también por el Gobierno alemán y los Estados federados.

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/economia/Alemania/pide/ayuda/EE/UU/agilizar/venta/Opel/elpepueco/20090824elpepieco_1/Tes