15 October 2012

Spiegel: Britain losing allegiance to the EU

David Cameron knows that if there is one thing that pleases his fellow party members, it's a rant against Brussels. At last week's Tory party conference in Birmingham, it didn't take long before the British prime minister had his audience in high spirits.

The new approach has sweeping consequences for the European Union. Cameron's stance has already prompted the Germans to rethink their approach. Chancellor Angela Merkel had long hoped that a permanent division of the EU could be avoided. She had repeatedly said privately that one should not give the British the feeling that they are no longer part of Europe, and that the door must be kept open for London.

Those hopes have now been dashed. The German government is convinced that the Eurogroup will be the core of a new, more deeply integrated Europe.

Each additional step toward closer cooperation in the eurozone deepens the rift within the EU. On the one side of the current divide is a hard core of countries that want to work together more closely. On the other side are countries like Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden, which are essentially condemned to be spectators if they no longer wish to join the rest. The dream of an expanding and more tightly integrated Greater Europe is over.

The French have no objections, given that they stand to benefit from this development. The individual countries would shape policy in the eurozone, which is what Paris has always preferred. The European Commission would lose some of its influence, while the Mediterranean countries would receive a stronger voice and Germany's power would wane.

From the German perspective, the British always provided a counterweight to the French penchant for government control over the economy and trade barriers. For Berlin, they guaranteed that the EU did not compete with the United States on the global political stage. That was why Merkel long opposed any development that would permanently leave Great Britain behind.

But the Cameron administration's unwillingness to compromise leaves the German government with no choice. Berlin's official position continues to be that all integration steps must be fundamentally available to all EU members. But in reality the chancellor has long since come to terms with the fact that there will no longer be a path back to the centre of the union for the British.

The notion that Europe will largely have to make do without Great Britain in the future is also related to developments in the eurozone. The German government advocates parliamentary control in the group of 17 countries in the zone. This could consist, for example, of the formation of a panel of delegates to the European Parliament who come from the eurozone countries.

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