Market-conforming codetermination—was this what European democracy had been reduced to by the autumn of 2011? Was this the hidden agenda of the troika programs, imposed not only on the parliaments of Greece, Ireland and Portugal but on the Bundestag as well—to make them market conforming? For many who joined the protests of 2011, Merkel’s words confirmed their jaundiced view of the EU as little more than a container for the rule of the markets, or that new buzzword of the crisis, “neoliberalism.”2 Merkel did little to clarify the situation. On September 22, a few days ahead of the IMF meeting
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