ギリシアの「最後の藁」とスペインの首相辞任要求デモ
ポルトガルでは、超緊縮財政を批判して連立与党の閣僚が辞任し、内閣が危機に瀕している。そしてギリシアとスペインである。
ギリシアにショイブルが訪問した。予想外の笑顔をみせてのアテネ入りである。が、ギリシア国民は２７％の失業率、給料はすでに２５％下がり、税は１０倍も上昇している。この国に、さらに２５万人の官庁勤務者をカットするというのが、今回のベイルアウトの条件である。このことが、the last strawとなり、内戦へと爆発するのではないか、という懸念が日増しに高まっている。
スペインも経済状況の悪さは似たようなものである。これに最近発覚したのが、与党はこの２０年間にわたって裏金を受け取り、それを指導者間で分配してきていたことを、当の金庫番が監獄の中から検察当局に洗いざらい話し、それとともに書類を手渡したということである。そのなかに、首相のラホイもいた。ラホイはこの話にたいし、いっさい口を閉ざしたままという行動をとっており、疑惑が深まるばかりである。そうしたなかで起きた辞任要求デモで、警察官との衝突が生じた。
ユーロ危機は、このような超緊縮財政を続けていくならば、社会的な暴発が生じる危険性、その可能性が高まるばかりである。
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Greece: hate figure Wolfgang Schäuble succeeds with unlikely charm offensive
German finance minister – loathed for the austerity he has personally prescribed – pulls off a stellar performance in Athens
Helena Smithin Athens
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 July 2013 22.58 BST
German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble (left) shakes hands with Greek finance minister Yannis Stournaras in Athens. Photograph: Pantelis Saitas/EPA
It was Otto von Bismarck, Germany's first chancellor, who said politics was the art of the possible.
In Athens, pushing his wheelchair along craggy pavements and the dark corridors of the Orwellian behemoth that is the finance ministry, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, would have made Bismarck proud.
In Greece Schäuble is a hated man; loathed as much for the austerity he has personally prescribed as the manner with which it has been handed out. No one is more identified with the twin ills – runaway unemployment and rising poverty – now bedevilling the county than he. To pretend otherwise is to play a fool's game.
But on Thursday Schäuble pulled off a stellar performance doing just that as he made his first visit to the country since the eruption of Europe's debt crisis in Greece in late 2009.
The political opposition may have declared him persona non grata. And riot police may have turned Athens into a garrison town, its roads sealed off in one of the biggest security cordons thrown around the capital in living memory.
But responding with a charm attack few would have thought possible for a politician more usually associated with irascibility, in meeting after meeting Schäuble pressed home the message that he was "happy" to be in Greece – and even better, delighted with the progress its debt-stricken economy had made.
"This visit is an expression of our confidence in, and support for Greece," he enthused. "I have not come as a teacher to give lessons."
The assembled press pack – including his retinue of German reporters – looked on bewildered.
"He's actually smiling," said one photographer as Schäuble joked with his Greek counterpart Yannis Stournaras at the end of a press conference. "I didn't know he had it in him."
The trip, barely two months before federal elections in Germany, was aimed at sending a "message of support to Greeks", Stournaras said.
"He is here to talk to the Greeks and to listen to our views," the minister insisted. As a sweetener, Schäuble had pledged €100m in loans to kickstart business activity in an economy stripped of liquidity.
But on the streets of a capital that resembled a ghost town for most of the day, there were few – if any – who believed him.
Almost four years into their country's worst crisis in modern times, Greeks are numb with fatigue, exhaustion and fear.
Even officials in the governing coalition who in private say Schäuble has been nothing but "rude and aggressive" were hesitant to support the German on Thursday.
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スペインの記事は省略
