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The 17 European countries that use the euro as their common currency have such widely varying debt burdens that they cannot survive as a single "eurozone" unless the strongest rescue the weakest. The cost of that intervention, however, could conceivably approach a trillion euros ($1.45 trillion) and would necessarily involve a major shift in governance authority from individual states to the European power center in Brussels.
Without Germany's wealth and credit standing, nothing can happen. But for Germany to give its blessing to a eurozone rescue mission, German leaders would have to compromise on core principles of thrift and sovereignty that until now they have fiercely defended.
(German parliamentarian Klaus-Peter) Willsch (from the conservative Christian Democrat party) and other euro skeptics have begun arguing that the weaker countries should consider opting out of the eurozone and go back to their old currencies, at least temporarily, in order to reorganize their finances.
Even a partial breakup of the eurozone could be damaging to the European economy, and it would be a significant retreat from the political vision that has inspired Europeans for many years and redefined the political identities of German youth.
"They pass part of their studies at European universities abroad, or they take an internship with a French-based enterprise, but work in London, so they understand how Europe works," says Gerhard Schick, a member of the German parliament representing the Green Party. He says any step back from European integration would cause an "upheaval" in the younger German generation.
On the other hand, if the eurozone is now to become a political union, it would cost Germany billions of euros, maybe hundreds of billions, to help weaker countries. Germany and other countries would have to cede some of their authority to the European Parliament and other pan-European organizations.
Markus Kerber is representing a group of German enterprises in a case before Germany's Constitutional Court, where he will argue that a bailout of indebted eurozone countries would violate the German constitution. He has outlined his argument in a pamphlet, "Wake Up, Citizens! Against the Expropriation of the German People in the Name of Europe."
"The bailout mechanism is a way to deprive Germany – and the Netherlands and Austria and Finland – of the citizens' right to dispose of their own taxes and defend their nation's rating," Kerber says. He likens the campaign to the US "Tea Party" movement. "We are defending the prerogative of fiscal sovereignty," he says, "against the European bureaucrats."
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