Martin Schulz tries to sound left-center, isn't very convincing

Martin Schulz, the German social democrats who is the European Social Democrats' candidacy for the EU Presidency is making a weak attempt to sound like a center-left candidate, talking about the need to create jobs, "but good jobs." He's also talking vaguely about the need for more "state," i.e., more active government. And he's making nice noises about identifying with the suffering of the victims of the depression and being loyal to their base voters. (Schulz: "¿Y si hemos sido nosotros quienes hemos abandonado a nuestros votantes?" El Diario 30.03.2014)

I don't buy it at all.

Martin Schulz has been a loyal Angie-bot in supporting German Chancellor Angela Merkel's massively destructive Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity policies. And his home party, the SPD, is currently the junior partner in Merkel's Grand Coalition government and also loyally committed to the austerity policies.

As Klaus Busch writes in Die Krise der EU und das Europaprogramm der Großen Koalition in Deutschland EU Infobrief 1/2014:

Die großen Erwartungen, die insbesondere in Südeuropa in eine Regierungsbeteiligung der SPD in Deutschland gesetzt wurden, sind bitter enttäuscht worden. Der Europakurs der alten und der neuen Regierung Merkel unterscheidet sich in den wesentlichen Punkten nicht. Weder in der Frage der gemeinsamen Haftung (Eurobonds, Schuldentilgungsfonds) noch der direkten Beteiligung des ESM an der Bankenrestrukturierung noch einer expansiveren deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik zur Entlastung der Leistungsbilanzen der Defizitländer gibt es einen Politikwechsel. Auch die strukturellen Mängel der Eurozone werden durch die neue Regierung nicht in den Blick genommen. Daher könnten bereits kurzfristig die Probleme des europäischen Bankensektors angesichts der Konstruktionsmängel der Bankenunion zu einem erneuten Aufflammen der Eurokrise führen.

[The great expectations which were placed upon a participation in government by the SPD in Germany, especially in southern Europe, have been bitterly disappointed. The European course of the old and the new government of Merkel are not differentiated in the essential point. Neither in the question of common debt (eurobonds, debt reserve funds) nor the direct participation of the ESM in the bank restructuring nor a more expansive German economic policy to relieve the current accounts of the deficit country is there a change of policy. Even the structural shortcomings of the eurozone are not taken into account by the new government. So the problems of the European bank sector in view of the faults in the construction of the bank union could quickly lead to a new outburst of the euro crisis.] (my translation)

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, grand coalition, martin schulz, spd