Wolfgang Schäuble, 2013. Demotix/Gonçalo Silva. All rights reserved.In 1917, French writer Gaston Leroux sent his serial hero, Joseph Rouletabille, on an espionage-mission behind enemy lines. The journalist-gone-investigator was to stop the German military from building a weapon of mass destruction that threatened to annihilate Paris and thereby force capitulation on France. Leroux’s novel Rouletabille at Krupp's describes in entertaining fashion a dark journey into the industrial heart of Germany at this time, the Ruhr Area. In a crucial scene, his protagonist witnesses a speech by the German Emperor Wilhelm II—the “anti-christ” in Leroux’s words—who directly links the destructive capacities of his country to the enforcement of “German culture” not only in Europe, but in the world.
Today, the Ruhr Area is stuck in a painful process of de-industrialisation and most Germans are tired of war. But it seems the German political elite still feels the urge to spread what it considers to be its culture. This has become visible again in the debates following the election of a new government in Greece. Unsurprisingly, the newcomers in Athens claim that in a democracy the outline of economic policies has to be a matter of political debate and for this reason voting results have to be taken into account. Yet the persistent argument in Berlin, monotonously repeated in each and every discussion on the subject, is that “everybody has to stick to the rules”. Some might understand this as a desperate, and in the end unsuccessful, attempt to block any debate on the austerity policies that especially Berlin is pushing forward in the Eurozone. And while this certainly holds true, there is in fact more to this.
The German government’s insistence on rules is deeply rooted in the tradition of Ordoliberalism that has shaped the policies of German conservatives since the 1950s. Broadly speaking, ordoliberals dislike government intervention in the economy. Instead, everybody shall agree on a set of rules which are then to be followed. The EU’s dealing with government spending is modelled after this theory. Its Maastricht criteria state that a country’s deficit may not amount to more than 60 per cent of its GDP and may not rise more than 3 per cent each year, otherwise the European Commission shall intervene.
