EU | Budget dispute: Merz against the EU

Chancellor Friedrich Merz wants to cut off the money supply to the EU. Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa In an ultra-neoliberal manner, Chancellor Friedrich Merz declares that it would be best for Germany if there were no new EU budget, thereby implying that the European Union is a kind of useless money-burning factory. In doing so, Merz ties in with anti-EU narratives that were already used during Brexit. Daddy Helmut Kohl would be spinning in his grave.

Anyone who wants to see what such words can lead to should look to Great Britain, where Brexit has left behind anything but “blooming landscapes”. If there were no new EU financial framework, that would be best for Germany. But of course Merz doesn't actually want that. Then why does he bring it up? Then why is he playing with it? Is this how he wants to show his power as chancellor of the great, powerful Germany? Merz wants to use an implicit threat to force hundreds of billions less in the EU budget, but in doing so he only causes unrest and irritation - just like at home.

It is the typical neoliberal idiocy of investment hatred. For decades, the Western bigwigs have been blessed with tax giveaways after tax giveaways and as a direct result, the state budget has shrunk and as a result, state infrastructure is still being sold off and the welfare state is being cut back. And because these fanatics of the empty coffers and their bigwig protection program can't get enough of their non-existent political triumph, it should also be applied to the EU structures.

Neoliberals are really fanatical cultists who want to sacrifice the last state infrastructure and social services to the golden lamb of the trickle-down effect. At some point it will reach the bottom! At some point it will work! Certainly. You just have to believe in it enough, because only those who completely submit to the savior of neoliberalism will St. Debt Brake bring them gifts.

It's pure madness. Instead of the promised prosperity, these idiots have worked consistently since the end of the 1970s to decouple productivity in their countries from the real wages of workers, to shrink the state infrastructure, to cut social security and to demonize investments in their own future. And as a thank you for this unpopular and ineffective policy, the triumph of the New Right followed, as people longed for an alternative to the progressive withering of their living standards.

In order to break this vicious circle, investments must be made - including in the EU, despite all its flaws. The focus on the national self in the competition of neoliberal tax ascetism only leads to the further withering away of state functions and capabilities and is nothing other than an ideological death cult. It is the modern form of top-down class warfare on steroids, packaged as a no-alternative medicine for the symptoms it itself causes.

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