When German travelers return from their hallowed August vacations this week, they will find that the euro is gone -- at least as far as Frankfurt airport is concerned. Without much fanfare, the massive euro sculpture, a fixture at Germany's largest airport since 2001, was unceremoniously dispatched in the dead of night to make room for an inter-terminal railway. The sculpture's unloved twin, which is famously perched in front of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the heart of Frankfurt, has become the symbol of the eurozone crisis (and a favorite of wire service photographers) and may suffer a similar fate. When the bank moves to the east end of the city in 2014, some urban planners are lustily planning the sculpture's removal from public view. Symbols are inexorably tethered to politics, and this one is a doozy.
But in the coming month, anxiety-ridden policymakers struggling to maintain the euro will face a series of threats that are anything but symbolic. September will witness a political big bang that ushers in another existential crisis, and failure on any single issue could wreck the European currency. Over the next month, four potential crisis points constitute a political cliff for Europe that will be key to determining if the eurozone has a future.
First, on Sept. 12, Germany's constitutional court is set to rule on the constitutionality of participating in the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), an institution that was envisioned as the permanent facility for pooled sovereign lending to debt-strapped European countries. The ESM, which passed the Bundestag comfortably (493 votes to 106) in June, would have autonomous control over German public funds -- and therein lies the legal problem. The German constitutional court sees itself as the guardian of a certain idea of Germany -- small, stability-minded, and inwardly oriented -- and court watchers expect a "yes, but..." ruling that stipulates that the red lines of German democracy have been reached. Any further moves to integrate crisis management at the eurozone level -- and there will inevitably be more -- will necessitate a referendum, the first in Germany's post-war history. Already the debate around a possible constitution-altering plebiscite is driving the political narrative.
The second crisis point is the upcoming assessment of Greece's progress in fulfilling the terms of its loan conditions by the troika of the ECB, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), expected in late September or early October. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is already trundling between Berlin and Paris in an attempt to prepare eurozone leaders for a disappointing report. Athens' hope for extending its repayment schedule has sparked heated debate in Germany, where exasperated rhetoric on the political right about the inability of Greece to meet its commitments has become more vociferous. Grandstanding in the Bundestag in the wake of the troika report is likely, especially from the arch-conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the business-minded Free Democratic Party (FDP). Germany's paper of record, Der Spiegel, called in May for Greek's exit from the euro, citing its unwillingness to undertake structural and labor-market reforms.
For ultra-cautious German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the unintended, potentially devastating second and third order consequences of the "Grexit" are anathema. She is a politician who prizes the maintenance of the status quo above all else and fears the unpredictable effects on Spain, Italy, and France, among other countries. A Grexit would eliminate all credibility that the eurozone has left as an insoluble currency union. This could lead to massive speculation and capital flight on an unprecedented scale from countries seen as next in line to go. While German banks have limited but important exposure to Greek debt, they have much more exposure to other countries of the eurozone's south and a need for these markets as consumers for German exports. The effects would tear through the German economy. It is this worry, not a vague sense of European solidarity, that drives the chancellor to hold firm on Greek membership in the eurozone amid the siren calls from her backbench to kick Greece out.
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