Not only «there is no “Italian” euro to depreciate versus a “German” euro», as Carmen Reinhart writes, but German exports were massively supported by the Bundesbank within the framework of the Target2 system, to which she refers. The cumulative amount of this support reached 751 billions €, 28 % of German GDP in 2012 (therefore, before the QE operations to which other commentators refer to minimize the macro-economical importance of Target2), at the expense of the producers of the countries in difficulty (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece) and in contradiction with the European principle that the competition must not be distorted.

Without this massive help authorized by the ECB without any counterpart, German exporters would have much more suffered from the crisis of the Eurozone and the German politicians would have better understood what “interdependence” means.

Without Target2, the German exports to these countries would have been almost totally stopped, not because the German companies were no more industrially competitive, but because the counterparts of the importers banks had no more value. In other words, Target2 allowed the German companies to sell goods and services to insolvent importers.

If the German companies had stopped to export to the countries in difficulty, as it would have happened without the Target 2 breach of the rules of the market economy, the producers of these countries would have benefited from this protection generated by the collapse of their banking system and would have had the capability to sell in their own countries, although they were still less competitive than their German competitors in industrial terms.

Target2 was rightly justified by the necessity to restore the fluidity of the trade between the EZ member states. However, the ECB should have offered to the countries in difficulty a counterpart to the loss of the protection deriving from the financial collapse of their banking system. This counterpart might have been to oblige the countries like Germany to launch a stimulus package in order to compensate the loss of the protection of the companies of the country in difficulty by an increase of their potential export market. Obviously, this stimulus package would not have benefited always exactly to the sectors who suffered from this loss of protection, and would have sometimes benefited to other sectors. However, this would have alleviated the global difficulties of the countries in difficulty, whereas Target2 maintained their heads under water for many years, by helping the German exporters to circumvent the rules of the market economy.

More details on this subject in these articles, written in French : http://pierrejeanraugel.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/09/02/ne-negliger-ni-linterdependance-des-pays-de-la-zone-euro-ni-leur-heterogeneite/ and http://w.latribune.fr/opinions/tribunes/20130520trib000765438/target2-la-roulette-russe-de-la-zone-euro.html.