Charlemagne | Europe's fault lines

摘要

Wolfgang schaeuble, Germany's flinty finance minister, summed it up neatly, if inadvertently. "Nobody is forcing anything on Greece," he told reporters in Brussels. "But the obligations apply." A day earlier Greek voters, chafing at those same obligations after many years of recession, had elected a government led by the anti-austerity Syriza party. Greece may have brought its problems upon itself. But after five years of control by a foreign "troika"-the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the imf, which have enforced the terms of Greece's bail-outs-it is not hard to see why some Greeks believe that plenty of nasty things have indeed been forced on them.