Handelsblatt worries about the cost of Europe to Germany

Under the headline "What does Europe cost" Handelsblatt worries about the huge cost Germany will have to shoulder to safe the euro and European integration. "The Americans say Germany has to supply money to Europe", the paper writes in its leading front page story. "The French request that Germany has to share the advantage it gets because of its low interest rate. Only Germany has the financial power to safe the euro, Brussels says." The paper goes on to add up the sums that Germany is already paying for the euro rescue: €280bn for the EFSF, €57bn as the share for the ECB's SMP, €79bn as Germany's net contribution to the European budget since the year 2000. But all of that was not enough, Handelsblatt writes. "Now the crisis managers develop new ideas on a daily basis: there is the banking union, an attempt to use the German savings for bankrupt banks in the South and there are Eurobonds in which the South would profit from the good German creditworthiness." In an editorial Gabor Steingart, the paper's editor in chief, notes: "It is not the European idea that has failed. It is the belief that one country can live on the expense of the other."