No, Margaret Thatcher never spoke of “EU socialism” and “German money”

The first female head of government in Great Britain, that was in 1979, is said to have once said that the problem with EU socialism was that at some point it would run out of German money.
Apparently Thatcher was of the opinion that Germany was, so to speak, the “paymaster” of Europe - a view that is also held by certain parties that advocate leaving the EU. But her real quote was about the British government at the time and the country's situation.

The claim

The sharepic with Thatcher's alleged quote exists in many variations, so here is just the version that has been circulating in the last few weeks:

The former head of government of Great Britain can be seen in the sharepic, along with the following text:

Margaret Thatcher
1925 – 2013
“The problem with EU socialism is that at some point it will run out of German money.”

Looking for sources

The best source to check a Thatcher quote is the “ Margaret Thatcher Foundation ,” on whose site you can find all of her speeches, interviews and statements, of course with a detailed search function.

But no matter how hard you search through the archive, the above quote cannot be found there .

However, there is a 1976 interview with Thatcher in which she actually discusses socialism and money. Apparently the misquote above is also based on this sentence of hers.

The real quote

In the interview that Thatcher gave to Thames TV on February 5, 1976 for the program “This Week”, she criticized the ruling Labor Party and the political and social circumstances at the time, which were rather chaotic. Anyone interested in the conditions in Great Britain at that time in detail should read an article about Margaret Thatcher from “The European” (see HERE ).

In the interview she literally says about the governing Labor Party:

“I would prefer to overthrow them as soon as possible. I think they have made the biggest financial mess that any government has made in this country in a very long time, and socialist governments traditionally make financial messes. They're always running out of other people's money . This is a typical feature of them. They then start nationalizing everything and people just don’t like that more and more is being nationalized and they are now trying to control everything through other means.”

Margaret Thatcher, Source: Margaret Thatcher Foundation

Specifically, it was about the fact that the Labor Party at the time wanted to implement democratic socialism and nationalized many institutions such as banks, civil aviation, railways, electricity, gas, etc. and wanted to follow a path between communism and capitalism, which ultimately led to many strikes and emergencies.

Let's summarize

Margaret Thatcher never spoke of an “EU socialism” that would “at some point run out of German money.” In her interview from 1976, she spoke of the socialism of the then ruling Labor Party and Britain's financial woes.

The quote on the sharepic is not only wrong in terms of the choice of words, it was not even simply rephrased, but the statement was also distorted and falsified in the spirit of anti-EU currents.

Also interesting:

In 2016, a mother was sitting at the airport with her baby and her waiting time was 20 hours.
When she briefly laid her child on a blanket on the floor and looked at her smartphone, someone took a photo of her - and now, 6 years later, people are still upset about it without knowing the story. – The mother at the airport, the baby on the floor – The story behind the 6 year old picture