Quite some European media celebrated the outcome of the G-20 meeting in London earlier this week. President Barack Obama especially has been praised for his role in bringing both China and France on board. Without the approval of these two powerhouses, any agreement would be empty.

Left-leaning European newspapers, pundits and politicians feared beforehand that Britain’s Gordon Brown and America’s Barack Obama would demand too much ’stimulus’ and not agree to a compromise. However, now that Obama and Brown have agreed to $1 trillion in stimulus, an amazingly high amount but lower than they hoped, everybody’s satisfied: interestingly enough, no one getting their way is considered the best outcome possible.

Well, “satisfied”... The British newspaper the Telegraph takes the lead in criticizing the agreement. As its columnist Tracy Corrigan explains, you cannot call it a “triumph,” but it is not a “failure” either. “It all depends where you set the bar. In my view, nothing too stupid has been decided and some reasonable measures have been agreed, though most, such as strengthening the International Monetary Fund, were widely expected. There is one very obvious missing item from the G20 communique – a further economic stimulus package – but that is no bad thing, given that plenty has already been done, and at substantial cost. Instead there is new money for trade loans and the like. That’s good enough for me.”

Furthermore, it was already clear before the summit that governments wanted to rethink financial regulation while France’s Sarkozy demanded too much of it. As Corrigan explains perfectly, and her words are echoed by conservatives in other European countries, we didn’t need a special G-20 summit to agree to basic reforms in this regard. Changes were needed; everybody was aware of that.

However, since the goal of the summit was to agree to some kind of deal to pull the global economy out of a recession, critical Europeans wonder why ‘regulations’ were deemed such an important issue. After all, no one buys into the notion that ‘regulation’ will somehow boost economies.

Dutch magazine Elsevier points out that the International Monetary Fund sees its budget trippled. The West especially will give the IMF many billions more than they normally do. These funds will then be used to help struggling economies. That’s a nice, progressive, idea: we should all help each other. But there is one minor problem: many European countries, the Netherlands specifically, simply don’t have the funds available to boost the IMF’s budget. This means they have to borrow billions. Those who are in power today may not have a problem with that, but future generations will have to pay off these debts.

Influential Dutch columnist, political activist and blogger Joshua Livestro explained earlier today that the agreements are not exactly groundbreaking, nor very useful to boost economies. $750 billion will be given to the IMF, Livestro explains, which will use it to prevent struggling economies from collapsing altogether. In other words, this money will not be used to “stimulate and grow  the world economy” but only to “prevent the ship from sinking altogether.” That is important, of course, but it has little to nothing to do with “a worldwide economic stimulus plan.” And the other $250 billion? The conservative Livestro explains that this amount is so low that its influence will be minimum.

Livestro is not disappointed, however. Like other analysts he is happy that Western countries did not agree to even more expensive Keynesian plans. Additionally, the summit was a success in so far that every country was serious and proved wellwilling to smooth out differences of opinion.

In other words, European conservatives believe it could have been worse. Considering the ones in power today, and especially considering Barack Obama’s goals beforehand, European commentators point out, the summit can be called a success. Obama wanted European governments to ’stimulate’ their economies just like he did at home, but in the end accepted their refusal to play along. The latter got what they wanted. They were prepared to invest heavily in the IMF and to help ailing economies survive, but they were unwilling to adopt Obama’s plans for their own economies.

European progressives are satisfied that “progressive action” has been taken, but not as progressive as Obama wanted. Conservatives, meanwhile, tell themselves: “thank God Obama and Brown didn’t get their way.”