Kommentare zu: Die EU als Empire

Von: Verfassungsblog - on matters constitutional - Ein Hoch auf das weltweit erfolgreichste Friedenssicherungs-Projekt ever! - Verfassungsblog

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 10:45:51 +0000

[...] Das bezeichnet zugleich auch – und darin stimmen Manuel und ich wie gewohnt wieder völlig überein – die größte Herausforderung, die sich dem frisch gebackenen Friedensnobelpreisträger jetzt stellt. Die EU muss einen Weg finden, die Zahlungsbilanz-Ungleichgewichte auf eine Weise zu lösen, die diese Ressentiments nicht mehrt, sondern abbaut. Sie muss Griechen wie Deutschen einen Grund geben, zu glauben, dass ihnen hier nicht gewaltsam etwas weggenommen wird, sondern ein gemeinsames Problem gemeinsam gelöst wird. Mit anderen Worten: Sie muss sich demokratisieren. [...]

Von: Verfassungsblog › Ein Hoch auf das weltweit erfolgreichste Friedenssicherungsprojekt ever!

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:26:24 +0000

Von: Martin Holterman

Martin Holterman — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:51:03 +0000

No, I’m saying that the Greeks chose to sleep in this bed at the last election, and at some point there will be another election, and then they’ll get the chance to reconsider. The last election very clearly turned on parties with different ideas about what to do with this mess. Some wanted to tell Europe to stuff it, some claimed they would be able to renegotiate, and some were more pliant still. As long as the Greek people regularly get to vote on what to do – possibly through referendums – I don’t see the problem.

Von: Max Steinbeis

Max Steinbeis — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 08:17:31 +0000

It’s all about who is to eat the loss, German banks or Greek citizens. But the struggle about who eats what and how much is one thing. The remodeling of Greece as a polity is another. I am not talking about the blame game of who is guilty and who’s not. I am talking about the legitimacy of political decisions. Would you really say that “you made your bed, now sleep in it” is enough to satisfy the Greek’s demand for legitimacy?

Von: Martin Holterman

Martin Holterman — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 20:50:56 +0000

@Max:
Greece’s weapon isn’t German inflation – on the contrary, German inflation is an inevitable part of the solution of the crisis, not a weapon – but German bankruptcy. If Greece defaults massively on its debt, it’s the German banks that have to eat the loss, and your guess is as good as mine whether they have the capacity to do so.

My point is simply that the solution for the potential legitimacy problem that you describe isn’t for Germany to do anything differently, but for Greece to. That said, I think Greece already considered the option of leaving the Euro, and decided not to. That means that they decided voluntarily to do what they are now doing, as opposed to a more drastic (negotiating) approach. So perhaps the legitimacy problem isn’t as large as one might think.

Von: Max Steinbeis

Max Steinbeis — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:23:31 +0000

@Martin
Don’t you think that the Troika exerts something you could call Herrschaft? And isn’t that relation of authority/dominion a unilateral one? Germans, in their turn, might be forced to swallow some inflation in the end, true. But even if you go as far as calling that some sort of counter-Herrschaft, doesn’t that rather make matters worse? It’s also true that Greece, or rather: the Greek government, permits the creditor states to rule over them. But so did the Maharajas, didn’t they?

Von: Martin Holterman

Martin Holterman — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:58:38 +0000

Wieso “Herrschaft”? Greece can bankrupt Germany just as easily as Germany can bankrupt Greece. It’s mutually assured destruction. The notion that the centre gets to dictate terms is only the result of the successful framing of the problem in terms of saints & sinners. The centre won the battle over the frame, and therefore they get to dictate how we go about solving this problem. But this only persists for as long as Greece and the other periphery countries permit it.