Germany Faces Criticism in Cyprus for Policies on Bailout Program

But the intense negative reactions to the bailout program for Cyprus appear to be jangling other nerves in Berlin, where politicians, and many Germans in the street, are bridling at the perpetual comparisons with Germany’s dark past.

Ms. Merkel’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, broke new ground on Wednesday by calling directly on European Union leaders in Brussels to do more to defend Germany’s role in helping the weaker members. According to the German Finance Ministry, Germany has contributed more than 220 billion euros, or $280 billion, pledged through loans and financial support packages for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, all negotiated with those countries’ euro zone partners.

“Germany acts in solidarity so that crisis countries will have a perspective in the future,” Ms. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democratic Party, the junior partner in Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition, said in an interview with the newspaper Münchner Merkur. “I wish that those people at the top — the president of the E.U. Commission and the E.U. president — would defend Germans against unfair allegations.”

She noted that although all 17 member countries were involved in deciding on aid packages when a country applied for help, Germany — Europe’s largest country and by many measures its most prosperous — always ended up as the target of anger.

She also appealed for Germany’s euro zone partners to help defend the measures intended to aid Cyprus from grousing. “So far, I haven’t heard much of this,” she said.

While Ms. Merkel has not stopped preaching austerity, support for which is widely held in Germany, senior officials have become quick to point out that the Germans were not alone in insisting on reforms from those European partners seeking financial assistance. The Netherlands, Finland and Austria are frequently mentioned as countries that hold a similar position.

Ms. Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, rebutted suggestions from journalists on Wednesday that Germany’s partners were not equally supportive of its position. He insisted that other European countries had used terms similar to Berlin’s in defending the second bailout package for Cyprus, which was announced early Monday after the Cypriots rejected a proposal made eight days earlier.

But it was clear that the images of angry protests in the streets of Cyprus — including placards showing Ms. Merkel’s mustachioed face above the words “Get out of our country” — had entered the discussion in the German capital. Without commenting directly, Mr. Seibert noted that the freedom to demonstrate also included “the freedom to make historical mistakes.”

Influential lawmakers in Ms. Merkel’s center-right party have also begun to grumble about how Germany is portrayed in nations that are receiving help.

“The protests, especially against Germany, are aggravating and inappropriate,” Norbert Barthle, a conservative deputy who specializes in financial issues, told the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Last weekend, a Spanish university professor compared Ms. Merkel’s policies to Hitler’s in a column that appeared briefly in the online edition of the Spanish newspaper El País. The column, and an apology from the newspaper’s editorial staff, was later taken down after a flurry of criticism on social media outlets, much of it coming from Germany.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, has sharply criticized Germany for what he said were Germany’s efforts to dictate a business model for another European country. His criticism was in response to comments from Berlin that Cyprus’s banking sector was no longer sustainable, and to Germany’s insistence that it be restructured as part of any agreement. Some analysts have said that being subjected to strong criticism goes along with having the strongest economy in Europe.

“Germany is experiencing the reality of power,” Frankfurter Allgemeine wrote in a commentary on Wednesday. “Because Germany’s economy is so strong and because the distance between it and its partners is growing, so is the jealousy.”

When Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was asked about the Cyprus deal and the assessment by some commentators that it was “a total German victory,” Mr. Schäuble, who has helped shape Germany’s European Union policy for decades, replied simply that his Cypriot counterpart, Michael Sarris, had thanked him at the end of the talks.

Mr. Schäuble, 70, would not comment on unflattering media reports about him that had appeared during the Cyprus negotiations. “I sometimes feel that I am described in a particularly absurd way,” he said, “and I am not an infrequent target.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/world/europe/germany-faces-criticism-in-cyprus-for-policies-on-bailout-program.html?partner=rss&emc=rss