www.stern.de/news2/aktuell/...fuer-reform-europas-1922647.html
..."Wir müssen jetzt den richtigen Weg finden, um die Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion dauerhaft zu stabilisieren, indem wir ihre Gründungsfehler beheben", sagte Merkel und forderte, auf dem EU-Gipfel im Dezember "einen ehrgeizigen Fahrplan" für den Umbau der Eurozone zu beschließen. "Er soll konkrete Maßnahmen enthalten, die wir in den kommenden zwei bis drei Jahren umsetzen können."
Die Kanzlerin sprach sich etwa dafür aus, den europäischen Institutionen "echte Durchgriffsrechte gegenüber den nationalen Haushalten" einzuräumen, um Schuldenberge und Haushaltslöcher zu verhindern. Die Mitgliedstaaten müssten die Krise zudem mit Reformen und harten Konsolidierungsmaßnahmen bekämpfen, auch wenn dies besonders den Menschen in Krisenländern wie Griechenland viel abverlange.
Aus den Reihen der EU-Abgeordneten kam scharfe Kritik an dem Kurs der Euroländer. Der Chef der sozialdemokratischen Fraktion im Europaparlament, Hannes Swoboda, forderte, das "gescheiterte Experiment der Sparpolitik" zu beenden und eine Politik des Wachstums einzuleiten. Der Vorsitzende der Liberalen, Guy Verhofstadt, rief Merkel auf, ihren Widerstand gegen gemeinsame Schuldscheine der Euroländer aufzugeben, um die Zinslast für Krisenländer zu drücken.....
Frau Merkel hat einen Traum
www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/11/8/merkel-has-a-dream.html
....The report would be finished by September, and if it said so, Greece would get the €31.5 billion. Then rumors surfaced that the White House wanted to have the report delayed until after the election. So the meeting of the European finance ministers on November 12 became the decision date. Turns out, the report still won’t be ready, and the next decision date might be November 26.
Greece might not make it that long. It ran out of money months ago. The government is delaying payments to its suppliers, businesses are shutting down, the healthcare system is cracking... and unemployment in November will be much worse than it was in August.
Even in the previously calm core of Europe, the ground is shaking. Thursday, it was the lifeblood of the German economy, exports. They fell 2.5% in September; exports to the Eurozone plunged 9.1%. And industrial orders, which had been skidding for months, caught up with industrial production in September, dragging it down 1.8%.
Hence, today’s corporate austerity programs: Commerzbank, Germany’s second largest bank, might chop off 5,000 to 6,000 of its 56,000 employees; and Siemens announced that it would shave off €6 billion in costs over the next two years and trim its workforce of 410,000 people—due to the “slowing global economy and more headwinds,” explained CEO Peter Löscher.
Accompanied by this drumbeat, Merkel explained her dream to the European Parliament. It was all about a big power shift from democratically elected national parliaments to European institutions. The European Commission of bureaucrats and appointed politicians would become the actual government of Europe with executive powers over national budgets. The European Council, similarly composed of bureaucrats and appointed politicians, would become an “upper chamber,” she said. And she threw a bone to her listeners: the European Parliament would receive a bit more power as well.
“We need to be ambitious and demanding and should not shy away from a change in the contractual foundation,” she said. So treaty changes. Or just treaty violations, which has been one of the strategies so far. The new system would “coordinate more strongly” a variety of national prerogatives, such as taxes.
Then the instincts of the powerful political animal broke the surface: she proposed a fund to deal with the pandemic of youth unemployment. Because “Europe is all of us together,” she said. “Europe is domestic policy.”.....