04 November 2011

Jan-Werner Mueller: What does Germany want?

In Europe, Germany is obviously the indispensable nation, yet it lacks not only a clear mandate to lead, but also a clear sense of what the European Union should look like after the great projects of peace, the common market, and enlargement are more or less completed.

Previously, the question of Europe’s final shape could be postponed or finessed. Now, Merkel has had the misfortune of inheriting an incoherent project (a currency union without fiscal and political union) – a situation that demands some type of vision from a politician famously good at everything but articulating one. Thus, Germany’s political class, confused about what it wants and generally unable to explain to citizens what it does, has responded with short-term solutions: yes, more Europe, but no European state; yes, more money to pour down fiscal black holes, but no departure from the old Bundesbank orthodoxies.

Merkel’s style has exacerbated this confusion: she prefers to lead from behind and seems incapable of the stateswoman-like speech that would bring people to accept bolder measures.

The president of Germany’s Constitutional Court openly speculates that, if more Europe is needed for technocratic reasons, it might be time for the people to vote on a new constitution. Leading intellectuals recommend that Europe’s periphery be permanently disempowered for the sake of Franco-German leadership. Others wish that Germany could be like Switzerland and retreat from a complex world that poses too many moral challenges. Deep down, however, everybody knows that there is no way back to Bonn.

Still, they probably would be willing to do much more with and for Europe if someone explained why it fits their ideals and interests. Talk of a new, Europe-friendly constitution indicates that they might even be willing to give up what, along with the Deutschmark, was the old Federal Republic’s most prized possession: the Basic Law, arguably the world’s most successful constitution during the last half-century. But Germans will not give it up for nothing.

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© Project Syndicate