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All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Euro

All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Europe get picked on for violating the same stuff France / Italy / Germany violate. So that system has no credibility if not all countries are treated equally. Your point about deficits (Maastricht Treaty and other EU regulations after the crises that passed), everybody ignores that but only small countries every get in trouble for it. And when it comes to deficits, Germany is actually one of lesser offenders compared to others. Also, it has been known for a long time that an agreement when EU was being formed was made and areas of influence setup. Germany was promised to get leading influence in ECB in exchange for basically turning Deutsche Mark into Euro and allowing the whole continent to use the German currency. French got full control of the IMF, for example, and also EU parliament being located partly in Strasbourg plus more influence in some other core EU bodies outside of ECB.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...
- addicted 8y ago
  The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.
  - richardknop 8y ago
    Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc). Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal
- richardknop 8y ago
  With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...

addicted 8y ago
The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.
- richardknop 8y ago
  Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc). Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal
richardknop 8y ago
With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.