World

Germany Attacks Gordon Brown

by Dave Keating | December 11, 2008 at 03:23 am

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Tensions appear to be simmering between Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and UK prime minister Gordon Brown. Earlier this week, Brown held an economic summit with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission (EU) president Jpse Manuel Barroso. Merkel was conspicuously absent, and her office said she hadn't been invited. Now the German foreign minister has publicly criticised Gordon Brown's plan to rescue the global economic crisis through government bailouts and shore-ups.

However Merkel has not been very active during the economic crisis, and has yet to come up with any kind of alternative plan.

The German finance minister has "launched a stinging attack" on Gordon Brown's economic rescue strategy, on the eve of European crisis talks in Brussels, said the Financial Times. Peer Steinbruck said in a magazine interview that the Prime Minister has been "tossing around billions" and heaping debt on a generation of taxpayers. The minister has already accused other European leaders of acting like "lemmings" and the comments come as Europe’s leaders meet in Brussels to discussthe proposed €200bn stimulus package.

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Uwe Paschen

at 04:33 on December 11th, 2008

The German Government and the French as well where against Bail outs from the very beginning, however Sakozy does flip flop depending who he just talked to and Germany is still opposed to bail outs, maybe why Braun did not want Germany present since he knew there would be no way to sway Germany from its position so easily. Now he made a Political Faux pas and may as well leave the EU and join the US as 51th state.

This was a big mistake of GB to make.

hadhubhi (not verified)

at 11:43 on December 11th, 2008

This is a really dumb and misleading article. Peer Steinbruck is an incredibly retarded fellow. Note his recent praise of Marx, and when he blamed the entire financial crisis solely on the US. This is pure political posturing, just as Gordon Brown recently said in a statement. Merkel and the Christian Democrats generally favor Brown-style solutions to the economy (I believe they are working on a stimulus package right now). Steinbruck is just engaging in some partisan politics, and it shouldn't be attributed to the German government as a whole. Blame the German SPD, they're the idiots here.