Tilt Toward Europe, Please : Bonn’s Western neighbors wonder about German policy

The government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl is under more than a bit of international fire these days because of all the monetary turmoil in Europe. The charge generally is that the Germans are putting national over international interests in the currency issue. The very fact that such criticism is mounting is now a problem for German policy.

Having absorbed all of failed communist East Germany, and having extended great sums of aid to Russia, Germany is now trying to pay the hefty bill. High German interest rates help because they attract a great deal of foreign capital. But those high interest rates also siphon capital out of other foreign currencies and put pressure on other European economies.

The German government is scarcely unaware of the problem. Last week, prior to the French referendum on the Maastricht Treaty, the German central bank dipped interest rates by a tiny fraction. The world economic community reacted with enthusiasm, believing the Bundesbank move to be only the first in a series. In fact that was all Bonn’s central bank was prepared to do.

Before long the international financial markets were roiling, and Britain, after a titanic but ill-fated effort to shore up its currency, unlinked its battered pound sterling from the European currency system. And on Sunday the Maastricht Treaty was approved in France--but only by a nose.

Any European organization--whether NATO or an economically united Europe--has as its goal the full and complete involvement of Bonn. An isolated Germany is thought to be the worst of all possible policy scenarios.

Kohl suggested Tuesday that German foreign policy appreciates the value of balancing European and German concerns. Bonn sounds more European in its foreign policy--now it needs to be more continental in its economic policy.