When Greek Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis asked German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble whether he would have accepted the proposed deal for Greece as the receiving Finance in Varoufakis’ position, Minister, Schäuble hesitated briefly but then provided a straightforward answer, saying “no.” This story is extensively recounted in Varoufakis’ memoirs from his time as Greece’s Finance Minister in 2015.
In Germany, Wolfgang Schäuble will be remembered as a chief negotiator for the reunification of Germany in 1989 under Helmut Kohl’s administration. He was paralysed after an assassination attempt on him in 1990. In Europe, he will be remembered as the uncompromising face of Germany in the Euro debt crisis when the Greek left-wing government wanted to renegotiate their bailout packages and debt with institutional creditors. Greece was then in an economic crisis with an unemployment rate of up to 27% and a 40% youth unemployment rate.
Those moments, extensively televised and covered in the European media, with Varoufakis riding his motorcycle in a leather jack while Schäuble repeats his uncompromising stance in Berlin will forever be etched in the memories of my generation because they remind us of the dysfunction, the challenges and the failures of the European Union. Irrespective of whether you agree with the outcome of the deals, and the eventual resignation of Syriza to Germany’s uncompromising stance, they were moments that showed that European unity should not be taken for granted.
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