Last week, the Federal Statistics Office revealed that GDP in Germany, valued at £3.1trillion, remained unchanged in the final three months of 2018. This meant that Germany barely escaped a recession – defined as a period of two or more consecutive quarters of contraction – that could have potentially brought the eurozone into a state of panic. Financial experts have warned that the German economy remains under severe threat, primarily due to the continued uncertainty around Brexit negotiations.
Across the eurozone, growth came in at 0.2 per cent for the final quarter of last year, with growth rates cut in half at the end of 2018.
At the height of the European debt crisis in 2011, several eurozone member states – including Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus – were unable to repay or refinance their government debt.
Mr Soros claimed that Mrs Merkel’s insistence that there should be no joint EU guarantee and that each country would have to take care of its own institutions was “the root cause” of the eurozone crisis.
In an op-ed for the Financial Times in 2011, Mr Soros wrote: “Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, insisted there should be no joint EU guarantee: each country would have to take care of its own institutions.
“That was the root cause of today’s euro crisis.
“The financial crisis forced sovereign states to substitute their own credit for the credit that had collapsed and, in Europe, each state had to do so on its own, calling into question the credit-worthiness of European government bonds.”
Mr Soros also suggested that Mrs Merkel might have not seen how it would be disastrous for the eurozone as a whole, because Germany is her homeland.
He explained: “As the largest creditor, Germany could dictate punitive terms of assistance, which pushed debtors towards insolvency.
“Meanwhile, Germany benefited from the euro crisis, which depressed the exchange rate and boosted its competitiveness further.”
The Hungarian-born currency speculator, now a US citizen, became known as the “man who broke the Bank of England” after he bet against the pound in 1992, forcing Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.