In the end, the Cypriots swallowed the bitter medicine. Facing national humiliation and a bleak future many complain their small nation has been forced to succumb to the will of a larger, merciless power – Germany.
Newspapers in Cyprus have portrayed Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, as a Hun – and accused Wolfgang Schäuble, her finance minister, of talking like a “fascist”. They are echoing the anti-German sentiment that has become commonplace in Greece and Italy.
This Germanophobia is unfair. Behind all the shouting and the wrangling, German taxpayers will once again be funding the biggest single share of yet another eurozone bailout. It seems a bit harsh that Germany is extending loans of hundreds of billions of euros to its neighbours – only to be accused of neo-Nazism in return.