The euro's honeymoon is over and, in Germany at least, the politicians are beginning to take notice.
Five months after the colorful notes replaced 12 national currencies in a burst of euphoria, complaints persist across Europe that opportunistic businesses slipped outrageous price rises past their unsuspecting customers.
"For everyday goods, the old price in marks has sometimes been replaced by the same number in euros," making the new prices about double, complained Mike Neumann, 36, standing outside a vegetable market at the Friedrichstrasse station.
He cites fruit and vegetable markets as the worst offenders -- but many people have similar tales of outrageously inflated beer or meals in restaurants.
Much of the evidence is, in fact, anecdotal. Inflation in the euro zone has moved little in recent months -- perhaps because items that were marked up have little weight in the mixture of goods used to measure it, and major expenses such as rent bills remained unchanged.
Common complaints about inflated produce prices are dismissed by retailers as a result of the cold winter -- not the euro.
The European Commission has estimated that the euro introduction may have increased prices overall by up to 0.16 percent. But consumers don't trust the numbers.
"All prices are rounded up royally," said Brian Rijngoud, the marketing manager at leisure firm Coronel Kartracing in Amsterdam. "A round of drinks used to be 25 guilders (11.34 euros); now it's more like 20 euros."
In Germany, the currency's nickname -- the "teuro," a play on the German word for expensive, "teuer" -- has gained a new lease of life. A recent survey suggested more than half of Germans, given the choice, would have their trusted mark back.
Amid a high-profile campaign against "euro gougers" by the country's most widely read paper, Bild, the government -- which faces elections in September -- has convened a meeting with business and consumer representatives in an effort to address those fears.
The meeting comes the week after Bild launched its launched its "teuro sheriff" campaign, offering a daily diet of euro-related horrors ranging from carrots to car batteries. Examples have included a family season ticket to a Bavarian swimming pool that now costs 66 euros, up from 100 marks (51.13 euros) and a Snickers bar that has crept up to 70 euro cents at a Hamburg gas station from 1 mark (51 euro cents).
While ministers admit there's little they can do to force down the price of a haircut or a cappuccino, they hope they can restore some trust.
Unease over how businesses handled the new currency extends well beyond Germany, although its complaints are the loudest.
"Each country is bad," said Caroline Hayat, a Brussels-based spokeswoman for the European Consumers' Organization, grouping associations across the continent. As people's complaints go unaddressed, "they are getting more upset."
A February survey by the organization recorded complaints to members about hairdressers, bakeries, parking lots, restaurants and cinemas, many of which Hayat said could only be explained by "unscrupulous retailers using the euro to increase prices."
But "scattered cases of excessive price increases should not be abused to bring an entire industry into disrepute," the head of Germany's hotel and restaurant association, Ernst Fischer, said in an indignant response to comments this month by Finance Minister Hans Eichel, who said that consumers should simply boycott rip-off merchants.
"There are a few black sheep, and there are many that did things really well," Eichel added.
Still, "statistics are one thing and reality another," as Eichel's spokeswoman, Maria Heider, put it. "It would be a bad government that didn't react to the feelings of the population."
That was just what the Bild newspaper accused politicians of doing, and similar complaints are being heard elsewhere.
In Spain, the private Confederation of Consumers complains that the government, having urged businesses to avoid using the new currency to mask price hikes, itself allowed dramatic rises in transport fares -- which it had the power to regulate.
"The government has stood out thanks to its absence," spokesman Antonio Lopez said. "It has failed to follow its own advice."
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS