[Atropos]

If you look at the hopfeully neutral doing business rankings compiled by the world bank (http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings) you see: - Italy: Rank 87 - Greece: Rank 100

I hope we can agree that these are horrible numbers for wealthy EU countries and not the result of political choices, but primarily bad management. I mean even countries that really cannot be considered laissez-faire capitalistic like Sweden (14), Germany (19), France (29) are doing much better. Even the former eastern european states, that started at a much lower level have better rankings...

So I wouldn't say that the aim is some "germanization" of Europe, but that the reforms in Italy+Greece are just clearly necessary.

Since Italy+Greece joined the Euro, they had the cheapest access to credit ever and it didn't help them at all. Maybe the harsh reforms and austerity now isn't optimal either because it is killing the economy, but it seems it is the only thing that can work.