The initial proposal to impose a one-time tax on accounts holding less than €100,000 came not from the European Union or from Germany, but from the Cypriot government, which must have known that it was likely to generate outrage, and that the Cypriot parliament would never vote for it. Perhaps the government believed that mass protests – with placards denouncing the EU as a fig leaf for revived German domination of Europe – would strengthen its hand.