Luxembourg attacks Germany
When Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, next meets his European counterparts, will he be heaped with praise - or brickbats? Germany’s economy is on a roll. It grew by 2.2 per cent in the three months to June, its best quarterly performance since reunification in 1990. But that has not necessarily gone down well with colleagues in other European capitals.
Unnoticed beyond his tiny country’s borders, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg’s prime minister, earlier this month launched an extraordinary attack on German economic policy, according to the Luxemburger Wort. Germany’s success was based on “wage and social dumping,” Mr Juncker is reported as having said. “The way Germany went about improving its competitiveness, I would not like to see in our country.” Since the launch of the euro in 1999, German workers had seen a meagre 12 per cent rise in wages, whereas his countrymen saw a 41 per cent rise, he went on.
August 18, 2010
The mouse that roared
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3 comments:
The Luxembourgers were not underpaid, that's for sure.
The country has a highly developed economy, with the highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world. Luxembourg's stable, high-income economy features moderate growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. The industrial sector, which was dominated by steel, has diversified to include chemicals, rubber, and other products. During the past decades, growth in the financial sector has more than compensated for the decline in steel. Services, especially banking and other financial exports, account for the majority of economic output.
And it used to rule a lot of Europe in the past: http://uroskin.blogspot.com/2003/09/luxembourg-europe-is-littered-with.html
...And there was Radio Luxembourg...naughty, naughty...it was cool though, apart from the signal fading in and out...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Luxembourg_%28English%29
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