EUROPE
What Angela Merkel wants
The coronavirus has forced Berlin to acknowledge that
the EU won’t survive without German leadership.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG
06/24/2020
10:14 PM EDT
BERLIN —
Europe’s reluctant hegemon is reluctant no more.
For
decades, even as Germany’s economic and political clout has grown, German
leaders, wary of offending neighbors distrustful of its power, have resisted
throwing around Berlin’s weight on the European stage — at least openly.
But the
coronavirus pandemic, in particular the massive economic fallout it has
wrought, is forcing Berlin to acknowledge what some European thinkers have been
saying for years: The EU won’t survive without more forceful German leadership.
“Europe
needs us, just as we need Europe,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a
sparse gathering of MPs last week in a speech meant to lay out her vision of
the country’s upcoming EU presidency, which begins next week.
“Agenda
Item 10” — Merkel’s speech as announced by Parliament President Wolfgang
Schäuble — began with a familiar recitation of the buttery phrases on war and
peace and the EU’s manifest destiny that are a mainstay of German political
rhetoric.
It soon became
clear Merkel had a more pressing message: As Europe struggles with the fallout
of the coronavirus, which she described as the “biggest challenge” in EU
history, the time had come for Germany to step into the breach. Most
significantly, Merkel made it clear that helping Europe was central to
Germany’s national interest.
“How Europe
fares in this crisis compared to other regions of the world will determine both
the future of European prosperity and Europe’s role in the world,” she said.
In other
words, Germany — the country that has benefited most from the European Union’s
common market, open borders and single currency — needs to do more than just
write generous checks and dole out advice on austerity.
“If Germany
doesn’t show leadership in Europe, there won’t be a Europe,” said James D.
Bindenagel, a professor at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn
and a former American ambassador who is writing a book on Germany’s role in the
world.
While the
notion that Berlin needs to lead might sound unremarkable, even obvious, to
foreign ears, in the world of German foreign policy, it represents a
significant shift.
After the
Cold War, a reunified Germany, now comfortably nestled in the center of Europe,
sought to maintain a semblance of balance in its relations with the U.S., its
protector, the rest of Europe and Russia, emphasizing free trade and
multilateralism. It continued to define its foreign policy in terms of its
“historic responsibility,” a nod to the legacy of World War II, not hard
national interest.
Even before
the pandemic, that strategy looked increasingly untenable. Faced with a
dysfunctional EU, a belligerent U.S. administration, an aggressive Russia and
the rise of China, Germany struggled to articulate a new strategic doctrine.
The
coronavirus has transformed those crosswinds into a full-blown squall, forcing
a reappraisal of both German and European strategy on issues as varied as
climate change and China.
“For the
first time, the Germans have recognized that we’re in a totally different world
and they’re trying to find their place,” said Ivan Krastev, a leading thinker
on European affairs and the chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in
Sofia. “It’s Merkel revising Merkel.”
Until the
pandemic, Merkel’s biggest worry was finding a successor. With her term running
out in just over a year and with no plans to run again, the German leader was
destined to ride off into the sunset after 15 years in office. Though the
chancellor was still widely respected, even her ardent supporters acknowledged
that she had run out of both steam and ambition.
The
coronavirus outbreak rejuvenated her. For a politician with a scientific
background who views politics as an intellectual exercise of complex problem-solving,
the pandemic presents the ultimate challenge. She also understood that the
pandemic represented a more urgent existential threat to the EU than other
recent crises, people close to her say.
Germany’s
early success in combatting the virus, especially as compared to the U.S. or
the U.K., has afforded Merkel both the political capital and the confidence to
become more proactive on the European stage.
Even so,
her previous forays into European politics show how hard it is to intervene
successfully. Merkel’s course in the twin crises that defined Europe’s past
decade — the eurozone debt crisis and the refugee crisis of 2015 — did more to
divide the Continent than unite it. In Germany, it spawned the far-right
Alternative for Germany party, now a fixture in the country’s political
landscape.
What makes
the current crisis different is that it affects every country in Europe.
There’s no opting out of the coronavirus. Even if some Europeans were
disappointed by the EU’s initial response, they’ve also learned that going it
alone, whether in Sweden or Italy, is not an attractive option either.
Countries
that in the past might have looked to the U.S. or even China for help have
faced a rude awakening. While the U.S.’s ham-handed response to the crisis has
damaged its credibility in Europe, China’s efforts to obscure its own role in
spreading the disease has also deepened distrust of Beijing.
For most
European countries, overcoming the fallout of the pandemic, especially the
economic impact, means relying on Europe, if not out of a sense of common
purpose, out of basic necessity.
The
question is to what degree the rest of Europe is ready to countenance the very
German dominance the EU was conceived to temper.
Germany is
the largest EU country by size and population, not to mention its economic
powerhouse. Merkel is without question the region’s most influential leader.
Germans now occupy key posts in Brussels, most notably the presidency of the
Commission.
Is Europe
ready for Berlin to take even more control? The short answer is that it doesn’t
have any choice.
The EU’s
received wisdom holds that only the “Franco-German engine” can power the bloc
forward. In the past, the people behind the wheel tended to speak French.
In the
early years, West Germany, grateful to have been invited to the party at all,
was content to let Paris take center stage. Over time, the Germans gradually
began to assert more influence.
But Germany
didn’t drive Europe’s transformation. In fact, Europe’s biggest step toward
integration — the euro — was the result of a German concession: In return for
France’s acceptance of German reunification, then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed
to relinquish the Deutsche Mark.
Compared
with the early days of the European project, France is now a diminished power
both politically and economically. In contrast to Germany, where pro-EU
mainstream parties are still supported by the vast majority of the population,
the Euroskeptic far right is an ever-present threat. To the degree Germany
still needs France, it’s to keep up appearances.
“Germany
treats France the way the U.S. treated the Soviet Union after the Wall fell,”
an adviser to the German government said.
In recent
years, even as German leaders never failed to intone the importance of the
European ideal in public, in practice, they treated the EU more as the problem
than the solution.
When
Germany did take the initiative in the past, it did so as much out of
self-interest, as for the good of Europe. Take the EU’s Eastern enlargement, a
German priority that put the country at the bloc’s geographic center and gave
the country’s industry unlimited access to cheap manufacturing and labor.
Those
countries, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, are now
fiercely independent, at least politically. In terms of their economies, they
are all heavily reliant on Germany. Poland alone, by far the biggest economy in
the region, sends nearly 30 percent of its exports to Germany, its largest
trading partner.
It’s easy
to see why Berlin has been content to treat Europe as an afterthought.
Following the financial crisis of 2008-09, Germany effectively decoupled from
much of the rest of the region. Its export-led economy quickly rebounded,
driven by demand for its cars and machinery from China, and then the U.S. As
Southern Europe grappled with its debt crisis, Germany’s economy powered ahead,
generating several years of fiscal surpluses.
In Berlin’s
view, the remedy for Europe’s ills, especially its economic ones, was for the
rest of the bloc to become more German. Europe’s laggards, to quote Merkel,
needed “to do their homework,” by reining in government spending and making
their economies more competitive.
Looking
back, people close to Merkel acknowledge that Germany’s approach was misguided.
While the U.S., which implemented ambitious stimulus measures from the
beginning of the financial crisis, posted a robust recovery, some countries in
Europe, weighed by austerity measures, suffered a lost decade.
Germany’s
embrace of much more aggressive measures to combat the current crisis, both
domestically and at the EU level, amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that the
policies of the past have failed.
Merkel’s
endorsement last month of a €500 billion debt-financed fund for countries
struggling to cope with the pandemic marked the turning point in Germany’s
approach. Prior to the pandemic, such a step would have been unthinkable.
The move
was possible in part due to a generational shift among Germany’s leading
economists; old-line conservatives who dominated previous debates have retired
and been replaced by a more liberal, internationalist voices. Even more importantly,
a change in leadership at Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social
Union, has made it more willing to compromise on financial matters.
People
close to Merkel say that while she wanted to send a clear signal with the fund,
it doesn’t represent the seminal shift away from parsimony and national
responsibility that many foreign observers saw. “The intention is to keep
Europe from collapsing,” one said.
That might
be naive. While the fund alone won’t save Europe, it’s difficult to deny that
Germany, which rejected similar steps for decades, has crossed a Rubicon.
Nonetheless,
it would also be an exaggeration to expect Germany’s embrace of a more robust
leadership role to result in the kind of federalized EU superstate advocated by
the likes of French President Emmanuel Macron.
“This is
not a federalist moment,” Krastev said. “No one is dreaming of a United States
of Europe, but you do have much more willingness for cooperation, especially in
the economic sphere.”
In Merkel’s
world, leadership means pursuing what’s realistic, a list that for the
presidency includes improving Schengen, revising the EU’s competition rules,
exploring taxes to fund the EU and the possibility of an EU security council to
assess external threats.
If she
succeeds in showing Europe that Germany can lead without dominating, she will
have also secured something that has eluded her for the past 15 years: a
legacy.
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