, Columnist
You’re Big, Germany. Now Act Like It.
The German devotion to budget surpluses hurts European partners and betrays a small-country mentality.
Don’t be so tight-fisted.
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Germany’s best friends in Europe, the Dutch, are becoming concerned that Europe’s most important country has adopted a small-country mentality. They’re right.
In an address this month at Berlin’s Humboldt University, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra accused Germany of wanting to be “like Switzerland: you stay on the sidelines, and you get to live happily ever after.”