Former German central banker Thilo Sarrazin, whose musings on Muslim immigrants sparked outrage in 2010, has triggered fresh controversy with a book that paints Germany as the euro zone’s hostage, forced to pay out vast sums to atone for the Holocaust.
In extracts of his book “Europe doesn’t need the euro”, due to be published on Tuesday, Sarrazin argues that the euro zone is holding Germany to ransom over its past aggression, blackmailing it into agreeing to euro bonds or mutualised debt.
Supporters of euro bonds in Germany “are driven by that very German reflex, that we can only finally atone for the Holocaust and World War Two when we have put all our interests and money into European hands,” Sarrazin wrote, according to extracts published in the Focus weekly.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition is resisting EU pressure to back the introduction of euro bonds jointly underwritten by all euro zone members, fearing they would remove pressure on heavily indebted states such as Greece to put their finances in order.
But pressure has increased on Merkel to reconsider following Socialist Francois Hollande’s victory in France’s presidential election this month and the issue is expected to be discussed at an informal EU summit on Wednesday.
Sarrazin’s new book has stirred heated debate among politicians even before it goes on sale.
“Either he is speaking and writing this appalling nonsense out of conviction or he is doing it with despicable calculation,” Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
