Free Republic

Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble told the Funke media group of regional newspapers on Friday that Germany needed to take more responsibility in military affairs with its allies. “We can’t hide. If Europe is to play a stronger role, then we must play our part,” Schäuble said. “We cannot leave everything to the French and the Americans.” The veteran lawmaker and long-time minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinets said he supported German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer’s plans to streamline the Bundeswehr and boost defense spending to reach NATO’s target of 2% of GDP. “When France asks us to do more about...

A new Franco-German assembly met in Paris on Monday in their first biannual summit as French and German parliaments deepen relations. The move aims to cement the special bond and influence the two countries traditionally have in the European Union. A total of 100 members of parliament, 50 from Germany’s Bundestag and 50 from France’s lower house of parliament (Assemblée Nationale), took part in the joint parliamentary summit. […] “Germany and France have a special responsibility for Europe,” the Bundestag president (Wolfgang Schäuble) said, adding that the new assembly “will neither impair nor abolish the sovereignty of either nation.” […]...

Wolfgang Schäuble, who is due to become the next president of Germany’s lower house of parliament, on Saturday made his last appearance at the annual conference of the International Monetary Fund as Germany’s finance minister. During his speech, Schäuble reiterated his warnings against protectionist economic policies and appealed for closer trade cooperation among countries. “We should all be worried about the weak growth of global trade and the increasing anti-free trade rhetoric,” he said. “We need more openness rather than less.” […] Schäuble, the chairman of the G20 finance group this year, said he believed the backlash against globalization was...

The European Union’s door remains open if Britain changes its decision to leave the 28-member bloc, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Tuesday, while acknowledging such a move is unlikely. “If they wanted to change their decision, of course they would find open doors, but I think it’s not very likely,” Schäuble told Bloomberg Television in his first public comments on last week’s election in Britain which saw Prime Minister Theresa May lose her parliamentary majority. He noted a pro-European surge in France for President Emmanuel Macron and a youth vote in Britain that swung sharply to the left-wing Labour...

Wolfgang Schäuble, a veteran ally of Angela Merkel, has admitted the cabinet made “mistakes” during Germany’s large intake of refugees in 2015. He wants lower standardized​ EU welfare payments for asylum-seekers. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told a citizens’ panel brought together the “Welt am Sonntag” newspaper that the situation “got out of control” when Germany kept open its border to 890,000 refugees, mostly people who had fled violence in the Middle East and trekked through the Balkans to reach Germany. “We politicians are people and we also make mistakes,” said Schäuble, a former German interior minister, adding that “one can...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Monday said he feared a messy stalemate in the US presidential election amid Republican candidate Donald Trump’s comments about the election being rigged. […] “(We) hope that it will be an election result which is accepted by everyone and that we do not possibly get a delayed stalemate,” Schäuble said as he arrived for talks with this eurozone counterparts in Brussels. “(Let us) believe in the rationality of democracy,” Schäuble added when asked if he was expecting turmoil in the markets after Tuesday’s election. …

A veteran ally of Angela Merkel urged Muslims in Germany on Sunday to develop a “German Islam” based on liberalism and tolerance, saying the influx of people seeking refuge, many of them Muslims, is a challenge for mainstream society. Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, stepping out of his usual finance remit, urged tolerance, saying the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants required a better understanding among Germans of what is important to them and how they want to live. […] Schäuble, a stalwart of Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), said: “Without a doubt, the growing number of Muslims in our country today...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Wednesday he opposes a race of competitive tax cuts in Europe after Britain indicated it may slash corporate tax. “We have no intention to start some sort of ‘race to the bottom’,” said Schäuble about plans by Britain’s finance minister George Osborne to slash corporation tax to avoid a business exodus after the June 23 Brexit vote. […] “We’re not opposed to fiscal competition,” he said, but it has to be “fair”, he added. …

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warned Friday that if Britain voted to leave the European Union, it wouldn’t have access to the single market like non-members Norway and Switzerland do. “That won’t work,” the veteran minister told Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly, which on Saturday plans to publish a German-English edition at home and in Britain with “Please don’t go!” on the cover. “That would require the country to follow the rules of a club which right now it wants to leave.” […] Schäuble warned that a Brexit could spark contagion in the EU, according to excerpts of the interview due...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Thursday that Britain will not get an improved membership deal with the European Union if the country votes to leave the bloc. Schäuble said in a speech he wanted to end any speculation that a “leave” vote in the June 23 referendum could be used to improve on a deal won by Prime Minister David Cameron to change Britain’s membership terms. Schäuble said that “this is the only deal on the table. An ‘out’ vote cannot be used to get a better deal. ‘In’ means ‘in’ and ‘out’ means ‘out.’” …

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says an EU-wide tax on petrol could help finance refugees and strengthen the bloc's borders. His comments come after sexual assaults by foreigners in Cologne caused uproar. "I've said if the funds in the national budgets and the European budget are insufficient, then let us agree to set up, for instance, a tax on a certain amount on each liter of gasoline," Schaeuble told the "Sueddeustche Zeitung" daily. "We have to secure Schengen's external borders now. The solution to these problems must not founder due to a limitation of funds," he added. Schaeuble went on to...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said on Tuesday that he wanted to do everything possible to keep Britain from leaving the European Union, adding that it would be a disaster for both the British and Europeans. “I hope that we can convince (the) UK… (to) stay in the EU, because a Brexit would be a disaster for the UK and for Europeans,” Schäuble said during a discussion with students at Sciences Po university in Paris. Schäuble also said that he hoped Britain would join the euro in the coming years. …

Criticism of Germany’s role in the recent negotiations over Greece’s future has been fierce. Spiegel speaks with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble about the government in Athens, his own feelings about a Grexit and his relationship with Chancellor Merkel. […] Spiegel: Germany took on a leadership role in the negotiations with Greece—and adopted a “very patronizing tone,” as European Parliament President Martin Schulz lamented. Does it worry you that people across Europe are talking about a “new German dominance?” Schäuble: There is no German dominance. Germany is in a good position economically, that is undeniable. But in contrast to France and...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Friday portrayed the Ukraine crisis as an opportunity for the European Union and the United States to revamp their relationship after the fallout of the NSA spying scandal. “I am confident that the Ukraine crisis will help us to strengthen transatlantic ties and rediscover our common interests,” Schäuble said in a speech on the sidelines of the annual IMF/World Bank spring meetings. Moscow’s “backslide into patterns from the previous century” has caused both sides of the Atlantic to move closer together, he said. “Like no two actors on the global stage, the United States...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble warned on Tuesday that failure to win the battle against youth unemployment could tear Europe apart, and dropping the continent's welfare model in favor of tougher U.S. standards would spark a revolution. If U.S. welfare standards were introduced in Europe, "we would have revolution, not tomorrow, but on the very same day," Schaeuble told a conference in Paris. In recent weeks Germany, wary of a backlash as many in crisis-hit European countries blame it for austerity, has taken steps to tackle unemployment in the bloc, striking bilateral deals with Spain and Portugal. "We have to...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is determined to end the euro crisis once and for all. On Sunday he effectively ruled out a Greek bankruptcy, and is now proposing far-reaching reforms to stabilize the currency union. Under his plan, Brussels would be granted far greater powers over national budgets. … The European commissioner for economic and currency affairs is to become equally powerful as the commissioner for competition. The competition commissioner is entitled to make decisions independently and does not require the agreement of the other commissioners in making those decisions. If the currency affairs commissioner were truly independent when...

In a not-so-subtle rebuke of President Obama’s tendency to offer unsolicited recommendations on how Europeans should handle their debt crises on Sunday evening, Germany’s finance minister suggested that perhaps His Munificence should focus on his own problems before trying to fix everybody else’s. Wolfgang Schaeuble told public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday that “people are always very quick at giving others advice.”He says: “Mr. Obama should first of all take care of reducing the American deficit, which is higher than in the eurozone.” An unfortunate and embarrassing truth — the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio is well over eighty percent,...

Wolfgang Schäuble calls for more political clout in Brussels. The European Commission should develop into a true government, says the Finance Minister in a Spiegel interview. He expected that the Germans must therefore vote on a new constitution. … "The Europe of the future, not a federal state, will be modeled after the U.S. and Germany. It will have its own structure. This is a very exciting experiment," said Schäuble. The Minister of Finance warned forcefully not to place the common currency at risk: "There is a real danger that in a breakup of the euro, as I believe (won't...

Presenting the government's annual domestic intelligence report, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Thursday said Islamic fundamentalists posed a bigger threat to Germany than neo-Nazis, anarchists or other extremist groups. Islamist terrorism "continues to be the greatest threat to stability and security in Germany and Europe," Schäuble said in Berlin. It is only thanks to hard work from German intelligence services and their partners in other countries that there have as yet been no serious terrorist attacks in Germany, Schäuble said. He said Germany continues to be a target for terrorists because of its growing military engagement in Afghanistan and the...

Bad News for Putin and Chirac: German right vows improved U.S. relationsTo France: 'Don't make us choose between you and the United States, because we probably won't choose you' By Nicholas Kralev and Tom Goeller THE WASHINGTON TIMES June 4, 2005 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder BERLIN -- The conservative Christian Democrats and their Free Democratic partners will restore Germany's alliance with the United States and downgrade Berlin's ties with Russia if they win elections in September, leaders from both parties say. In a series of interviews, they also said that they would review their alliance with France, which they intend...