Germany, the largest net contributor to the EU budget, is its greatest economic power, a power that it bolsters both through the benefits of its membership of the EU and through its political influence within it. It could have used this power to bring the whole of Europe upwards, in a double success of common prosperity and political perspectives. This is not the case and this double failure largely explains the pervading European melancholy that has been reflected at the ballot boxes with a situation in which all member states will lose out including, this time, Germany itself.
During the related sovereign debt and Eurozone crises, Berlin imposed the ‘budgetary treaty’ on almost all of its partners. What this treaty did for the first time was to place heavy burdens on the shoulders of the countries in deficit, but not of those in surplus. But Germany is about to achieve a ‘3% of GDP inverted’, with a budgetary surplus that seems to be going nowhere; by stimulating domestic demand, its leaders could help to give a shot in the arm to the economies on the periphery, but have declined to do so.
The Federal Republic of Germany has thus moved away from the Rheinland model with increased job insecurity and a system of austerity-competitiveness that is now standard, not just for itself, but also for its partners, by means of a hybrid model of governance in which the European institutions, and the Commission most of all, have been given continuous powers of supervision over the national budgets. Belatedly, elements of social policy have been included in the work of the European Semester. The fact that considerable differences persist between the member states when it comes to growth and employment rates is the result of this policy; in other words, the Union has disunited.
Recent developments are becoming a matter of concern to Germany as well: GDP growth is down (1% in 2019), car production (a key sector) has slowed; American protectionist measures have created bilateral tension. The rapid rise of the far right (there are 94 AfD members of parliament) in the recent federal elections has further fed into this emphasis on national interests. All of these factors argue for a reinforcement of the ‘Germany First’ reflex.
The most recent act involving the State was the signature, on 22 January, of the Franco-German treaty of Aachen (see EUROPE 12177, 12174), which is obviously not part of any ‘enhanced cooperation’ within the meaning of the EU treaties, but contains overlaps with the standard commitments of all member states. The text strengthens links more ambitiously and precisely than the Élysée treaty (1963), particularly concerning climate and defence. It is clearly intended as a signal to the EU.
But at the same time, French Eurozone reform projects have not been crowned with the hoped-for success: the content of the specific Eurozone budget is a problem for Berlin, as are the ideas of ‘democratisation’ and ‘transparency’ of governance. Is this about taxing the digital giants? France championed this cause while Germany held back, before consenting to a common text that had been watered down considerably. Waiving unanimity at the Council on fiscal matters? Paris strongly supports the Commission’s proposal and its privileged partner is from a group of countries described as ‘open’, but also as lukewarm. The two governments are getting together to support the Alstom-Siemens merger, which has been readjusted by the Commission, and to go to battle to revise the competition rules in the name of Europe, but in fact thinking chiefly of themselves (see EUROPE 12197, 12192).
We can hardly touch upon this subject without referring to the person of the Chancellor, in power since 2005. An Eastern European, Angela Merkel understands the Atlanticist sympathies of her Eastern partners. The reunification of Germany and the great wave of enlargement of 2004 are, to her, far more important than the Schuman Declaration. Her motivation, when it comes to Europe, is to preserve values and prosperity, not to become part of an ‘edifice’, unlike her celebrated predecessors Adenauer, Schmidt, Kohl. Her scientific background prompts her to study problems objectively, one by one, to resolve them pragmatically; tomorrow is another day. Following the failure of the constitutional treaty, even though this was largely ratified by the Bundestag, she has been working to bring a ‘conventional’ treaty to life, with the major advantage of bringing in double majority in voting at the Council. After the budgetary treaty, however, she had got everything she wanted and lost all interest in a new treaty.
Her political methodology and approach take their inspiration from parliamentarism: working on the members, one by one, to score points, to maintain her group and her party; this is why, of all European leaders, she is the one who has best got the measure of the European Parliament and kept an eye on its balances of powers. She invests enormously in appointments. Although now only the chair of the CDU, her manoeuvring behind the scenes led to the elimination of Verhofstadt, followed by the appointment of Barroso to the head of the Commission. In 2014, she had a hand in furthering the election of Juncker and imposed Tusk as President of the European Council. In the ‘financial galaxy’ of the EU, she places her pawns: the head of the EIB (Hoyer), EMS (Regling), the Single Resolution Board (König), the Court of Auditors (Lehne). Another German (Selmayr) was in charge of Juncker’s cabinet, before being promoted to Secretary General of the Commission, under circumstances that became notorious. And yet another German, Weber, has become the EPP’s Spitzenkandidat. But could this skill at the game, to the point of Machiavellianism, to fill positions, be a policy of their own – a European policy?
Merkel also takes care of her partners from the East. Her recent meeting, on 7 February, with leaders from the Visegrád group bears witness to this. You don’t see the German leadership plotting to sanction the illiberal excesses of the Polish and Hungarian regimes and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party is still a member of the EPP family.
In the West, Brexit will have increased the relative weight of MittelEuropa and the relationship with France is a constant priority, albeit one born of Realpolitik. Did the Merkel-Sarkozy partnership of the years 2007-2012 call all the shots in the senior European echelons? Was there not talk of a ‘Merkozy’ board, to the detriment of an institutional balance? She does not care. And if, over the years, the Franco-German axis has become imbalanced itself, this could be put down to weakness on the side of the Élysée. Macron’s reforms have not been enough to convince Berlin to throw itself behind a pro-European reawakening such as the one referred to by the President in his speech at the Sorbonne in September 2017 (see EUROPE 11870), and the major social crisis in France has put the bold project to create a new foundation for the EU onto the backburner. The challenge of the European elections has been diluted in a sort of conceptual lethargy, of formalised platitude.
But for all this, Germany bears, as ever, the weight of a political responsibility that reflects its real-world powers. What can be done about this? Maintaining the status quo, bothering only with current affairs, would ultimately satisfy nobody. Is Germany’s unpopularity, particularly in the countries of southern Europe, an argument for inertia? Or the opposite – an argument for new dynamism?
The Chancellor made her most surprising decision in 2015, when she decided to throw Germany’s doors open to hundreds of thousands of migrants, with a cry of ‘Wir schaffen das!’ (‘We can do this!’). This is undoubtedly what history will remember her for. She paid the price at the ballot box, but her ethical instincts made the decision for her. Kant, another Eastern European, was not far away: the conflict between morality and politics was what got him working.
Now, the grand coalition, so painstakingly put together, is struggling, with hard ultra-nationalism on its right and on the inside, social democracy that is veering off to the left in order to reinvent itself; will the government make it through its mid-mandate scrutiny next autumn? Before then, there will be the 26th of May. And before that, there will be the citizens’ calls for a different Europe, an unusual expectation in 27 countries. It would be useful to remind the Chancellor that the benefit of surprise is one of the keys to politics and that when one leaves a room, one should leave it memorably.
The window of opportunity is now. How do you see the organisation of the Europe of tomorrow? How will this major continental democracy function? What about the green transition, the sharing of wealth, European defence? Get to it, leave behind your sterile self-control and tell us! Build it! Open up the future! And, by way of conclusion, promise us: ‘Wir schaffen das!’
Renaud Denuit