Wolfgang Schäuble leaves Finance, but austerity remains in the EU

"Eight years is enough," Wolfgang Schäuble said in his farewell to the Eurogroup, making a very positive assessment of his move to Brussels as German finance minister. "Even the most skeptical, those who did not believe we were able to maintain the stability of the euro, must now recognize it," he argued, summing up the legacy of austerity and the firm hand with which he kept his pulse for fiscal discipline even in the worst moments of the crisis.

"It's a bone, like that teacher we all had in the institute, which made us feel very bad and we hated it then, but that instilled values ​​that we keep throughout life and which we end up remembering with affection," he said Tuesday one of the Greek technicians who suffered the worst tensions between Schäuble and Varufakis, and who now admits that "Schäuble is leaving, but austerity remains" in the European budget culture. And he did not refer to the three-page document drawn up by his colleagues in July and with which Schauble said goodbye to the Eurogroup this Tuesday, but to the conviction that "European budgets will never be what they were before the crisis".

The German 'non paper', a definition in its title to underline its informal character, advised against a euro budget, as well as European unemployment insurance and any initiative that might lead to mutualisation of the European debt. Schäuble only agreed to the creation of a European Monetary Fund if in rescuing countries they undergo strict conditionality in the form of reforms.

Your will
He also spoke of the need to strengthen the fiscal rules of austerity and pointed out that the competence of budgetary surveillance should remain in the hands of the new Intergovernmental Monetary Fund, all of them proposals for discipline, rather than transforming into measures, intended to serve as a testament, almost moral character, that the European politician of more trajectory leaves to its successors.

If Merkel freely named that portfolio in the next government, it would be for Peter Altmeier, a close collaborator who has all his confidence. The Chancellor has great plans for Europe in this term and would feel more comfortable if the Eurogroup feels one of their own.

But negotiations for the "Jamaica Coalition" may force her to sacrifice that position in favor of FDP Liberal leader Christian Lindner or liberal finance expert Wolfgang Kubicki. Lindner has already warned that his party was wrong in 2009 when he entered the Executive with Merkel occupying the foreign portfolio. "The only way to look at you from Angela Merkel is with the Ministry of Finance," she repeated in several interviews. It can also happen that the brother party of Merkel's CDU, the CSU's Bavarian Social-Christians, demand the position for one of their own, Markus Söder, until now Minister of Finance of Bavaria. But any of those names means austerity and hard hand.