
The vast majority of the political Bundestag opposition (SocialDems, Greens) with the exception of the former Communists-Socialists of the SED-PDS successor party "The Left(ists)" will be joining Chancellor Merkel's request for the parliamentary vote on the "European Financial Stability Facility - EFSF" - aka 'Euro Rettungsschirm' (Euro Rescue Umbrella) in Germany.
Albeit having some conservative and free-democratic renegades in her ConLib coalition who have been critical and opposed to the EFSF extension, Ms. Merkel will get the crucial 'go ahead' vote in the lower house of parliament, shortly made mandatory by the German Supreme Court - the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht).
But, will the political blame game and fighting on the means and ways of handling the domestic and Eurozone debts be over? Nope, it's just the beginning.
It's nevertheless a good political style by the SPD-Greens to assist the government and take responsibility. Burden sharing is a noble thing but we have to know that the 1998-2005 SocialDem-Greens government of Schröder-Fischer prior to Merkel's CDU/CSU-SPD grand-coalition (2005-2009) watered down their own acknowledged Maastricht stability criteria, thereby encouraging other Eurozone members to follow suit and 'cook' the balance sheets.
Now, the SocialDem fraction leader in the Bundestag and former Foreign Affairs' Minister in the cabinet Merkel I, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has been blaming Merkel of not telling the whole truth about the real scope of the EFSF and lack of transparency to the political community in the lower house and to the populace.
Former German social-democratic Finance Minister in the Merkel I cabinet and front-runner to become the chancellor-candidate, Peer Steinbrück, did confirm in various statements and interviews that Greece's admission to the Eurozone was a mistake.
Well, this 'revelation' comes quite late, indeed.
Steinbrück and his predecessor as Finance Minister (1999-2005) of Schröder I and II, Hans Eichel, were surely too naive and obviously lacked the political acumen of foreseeing ill will and 'intelligent' book-keeping by governments in states with former 'soft currencies', like the Portuguese Escudo, the Italian Lira, the Greek Drachma and the Spanish Peseta, while celebrating and being drunk with euphoria about the biggest currency project in EU's history.
These failures in apparent misjudgments can also be applied to the then conservative-free democratic opposition.
The German political mainstream optimism in terms of being successful with this unpredictable Euro endeavour has still been based on the amazing results of transforming the rock-bottom former GDR to quite competitive new federal states in the reunified entity of 16 (subordinate) federal states and the 'roof' state since 1990.
What most pundits seem to forget is the still necessary huge money transfer and tax compensation toward the five new states of Mecklenburg- W Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia as well as Berlin that got extended by some 1.1 million people with reunification. This financial 'enterprise' has been concerning about 16 million people in the eastern part of Germany since.
Bailing out Greece by Germany alone, for example, would mean an additional financial and economical burden of some 60 percent of the current solidarity efforts toward the eastern German states, paid for by the German taxpayers since July 1991.
The major Eurozone politicians don't want a euro failure, nor the U.S. which fears a ripple effect.
Sobering news is that even with constitutional debt brakes implemented financial air-bags or rescue umbrellas won't be obsolete.
That is why the christian-democratic, conservative Saarland governor, Ms. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, made headlines about the redundancy of constitutional debt ceilings in the prospect of possible contributions from federal states' budgets toward the EFSF.
Finally, the big brains in Berlin ought to stop arguing about guilt and blame - just come together for the common Euro future.



