Skip to footer

Europe: Slowly pulling out of crisis?

Although experts predicted that European countries would not be able to eliminate their deficits while Germany kept up its surplus, Karlsson notes that exactly that has happened: several countries, including Spain, Portugal, and Italy, are all back to reporting budget surpluses.

|
Gero Breloer/AP/File
German Chancellor Angela Merkel gestures during a press conference in Berlin, Germany, on July 19, 2013. Although Europe remains in a debt crisis, the surplus of several European countries has risen in the last few years. Even Greece's deficit has fallen dramatically, Karlsson says.

As late as 2011, the Euro area only had a very small (€15 billion, or about 0.16% of GDP) aggregate current account surplus, as the large €147 billion surplus in Germany was almost entirely cancelled out by large deficits in countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy.

The German surplus has continued to increase, but the euro area surplus has increased more than 12-fold, and was €184 billion in the 12 months to May, up from €122 billion in 2012 and as previously stated €15 billion in 2011.  That €184 billion number is now higher than the €172 billion German surplus, meaning that the balance excluding Germany has improved from a deficit of €132 billion in 2011 and a deficit of €45 billion in 2012, to a surplus of €12 billion in the 12 months to May 2013.Spain, Portugal and Italy now all have surpluses and though Greece still has a deficit, it has fallen dramatically.

Paul Krugman once asserted that it was impossible for the deficit countries of the Euro area to eliminate their deficits while Germany kept their surplus, but that is exactly what has happened.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Europe: Slowly pulling out of crisis?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Stefan-Karlsson/2013/0724/Europe-Slowly-pulling-out-of-crisis
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe