Greece struggles with stimulus package, EU titans brace for battle royal over Union’s future

By George Gilson

The government hopes its sweeping stimulus measures can keep an economy still reeling from a ten-year economic depression on a respirator as Greek business and labour face the spectre of total disaster and Berlin to date is steadfastly rejecting the calls of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leaders of France, Italy, Spain, and six other countries who in a letter to European Council President Charles Michel issued a plea for the issuance of an emergency coronabond.

Germany and the Netherlands have taken the hardest line as they stubbornly refuse the mutualisation of debt despite or perhaps because of the fact that the German economy is also being hit hard with even industrial giants like Daimler Benz already confronting a major crisis that some analysts believe in a worst case scenario  could lead to the once inconceivable prospect of nationalisation.

Critics suggest that  the  EU is descending into a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all  against all in which the staunchest fiscal hardliners - mainly The Netherlands and Germany - are adopting a stance that suggests that each country is essentially on its own and out for itself and have at times shocked other member-states with their rhetoric.

Berlin proposes that those hardest hit repair to the ESM for loans that would break the back of the highly indebted countries.

Even as the coronavirus pandemic is bringing other EU countries to their knees, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra is criticising the economic sins of wayward countries which in the past had strayed away from fiscal discipline.

They have insisted so far that the mutualisation of debt (which means the German and Dutch taxpayer will foot a large part of the bill) even in an...

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