Hollande's pro-growth rhetoric won over France. But what about Merkel?

Hollande's pro-growth rhetoric won over France. But what about Merkel?

Press quote (The Guardian)
Simon Tilford
24 June 2012

As Simon Tilford notes in a report for the CER, Germany seems to have a sense of invulnerability amid the storms around it. "For many Germans, including many senior policymakers, the crisis seems to be someone else's problem," Tilford writes. "Merkel's obduracy is widely credited with striking a blow for Germany's national interests ... This is puzzling, because Germany is much more vulnerable than German policymakers appear to believe. And Germany's strategy for dealing with the crisis is maximising, not minimising, the risks to the country's economic and political interests."