Merkel’s Party May Adopt Euro-Exit Clause in Platform, CDU’s Barthle Says

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by THE-BEAKER, Nov 10, 2011.

  1. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union may adopt a motion at an annual party congress next week to allow euro members to exit the currency area, a senior CDU lawmaker said.

    A motion that proposes allowing a euro member that doesn’t want to or is unable to comply with the common currency rules to leave the euro without losing membership in the European Union has been accepted by the party for debate at the CDU’s annual congress, Norbert Barthle, the ranking CDU member of parliament’s budget committee, said in a phone interview in Berlin. It probably has enough support to be passed by delegates at their meeting in the eastern German city of Leipzig on Nov. 14-15, he said.

    “This motion will go through, I am sure of it,” Barthle said late yesterday. “Any country that wants to leave the euro on its own should not be prevented from doing so.”

    Any German move to allow a state to exit the currency area, which is not envisaged under current euro rules, would require changes to the bloc’s guiding treaty to come into force. That can only happen with the backing of Germany’s EU partners.

    “It will become part of our party platform for future policy with regard to amending the framework treaties of the euro,” Barthle said.

    To become government policy, it would have to be agreed by all three parties in Merkel’s coalition and may need opposition support in a full parliamentary vote.

    The motion was first reported yesterday by German newspaper Handelsblatt.

    Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy first raised the prospect of a member state leaving the euro last week, when they withheld aid for Greece and said that a planned Greek referendum on its bailout would be an in-or-out vote on euro membership. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou later pulled the ballot.

    Mario Draghi, in his first week as European Central Bank president, said Nov. 3 that it’s not illegitimate to question Greece’s place in the euro area. Even so, the bloc’s founding treaty doesn’t allow for a country leaving and it would be hard to imagine it happening, he said.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...it-clause-in-platform-cdu-s-barthle-says.html