Europe needs a German engine
Jun 29th, 2011 | By Daniel Boomsma | Tags: Angela Merkel, Arab Spring, Eurozone, Germany, leadership, Schengen Agreement, Timothy Garton Ash, United States
The current euro-zone crisis gives most EU member states little hope. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for optimism. Europe can’t even formulate a unified policy to tackle the current problems. At the same time the European citizens no longer seem to accept ‘’the continued disunity of decision-makers in Brussels’’. When looking at the situation in Spain and Greece (where ‘angry people’ are respectively called the indignados and the aganaktismenoi), one can only conclude that things aren’t getting better.
According to Garton Ash the crisis in the eurozone is not the only cause of Europe’s current problems. There is much more. First, the Schengen Agreement (1985, marked the end of internal border controls) became subject of debate when France and Italy said that the treaty no longer worked ‘’just because a few thousand people from convulsed North Africa had taken refuge on the Italian island of Lampedusa’’. The Schengen debate made it painfully obvious that Europe lacks unity and that no one seems to take responsibility to end the deadlock.
Garton Ash also stated that Europe failed in anticipating on the new situation in the Middle-East. The Arab spring and the developments afterwards asked for decisive action. Now we are near an Arab fall, as the Americans called it. The military intervention in Libya is still going on and there is no sign that it’s going to be over any time soon. US defence secretary Robert Gates even accused Europe of ‘’complacency over international security’’. Although Garton Ash calls the Arab spring one of the most ‘’hopeful set of events in the 21st century so far’’, he again concludes that “[Europe’s] collective and institutional response to this historic opening has been feeble beyond belief’’.
In another example of the stalling of the European Union, Garton Ash analyses the speech of the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan. In this speech, held after the recent Turkish elections, Erdogan didn’t mention the EU at all. The ‘’magnetic attraction of EU-membership’’ seems to have less and less effect on Turkey. Even enlargement, Europe’s success story until now, is stalling.
But what is the cause of all this? Is it a lack of leadership? Garton Ash says a lack of leadership is not the whole, but surely half of the story. Leadership is poorer than two decades ago when the great ‘’motivators of the European project’’ like Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand and Jacques Delors did more than just the minimum. In those days, West Germany played a substantial role in European and foreign policy. Germany wanted to rehabilitate itself and was on its way to unification (1989). France and other European member states were willing to help to achieve that goal. Europe doesn’t have a similar goal nowadays, although Garton Ash mentions the rise of giants such as China and, to a lesser extent, India, as challenges ahead.
The key to solving the problems I mentioned is Germany. ‘’We need an exceptional political commitment’’, says Garton Ash. This is when Angela Merkel enters the stage. Germany is an indispensable power when it comes to fighting economic problems with political means. Until now Merkel has done the minimum and she knows that. Former foreign minister Joschka Fischer on Merkel: ‘Ms Europe seems to have become Frau Germania’’. Although Germany has problems of its own, Merkel must realize that to tackle the euro-zone problems, to end debates on the Schengen agreement and immigration in general (though Spain, Italy and France should play a bigger role in that discussion), to meet the Arab Spring challenges and to strengthen our relation with the United States, Germany is needed more than ever.
Literature:
Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, Random House, 1993
Timothy Garton Ash, Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West, Random House, 2004
Timothy Garton Ash, The Uses of Adversity: Essays on the Fate of Central Europe, Random House, 1989
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November 21st, 2012
Very nice article. Indeed, I agree that Germany should play a much bigger role in EU affairs, however, recently the only development one could witness was the backlash of EU politics on national politics. Merkel’s decision after Fukushima to phase out nuclear power was selfish, irrational and all in all anti-European, insofar in that she did not consult with Germany’s immediate neighbours. Not only will this lead to higher energy prices for most Europeans, not just Germans, but it also threatens the energy security of the EU. (And yes, I think it took courage to make that decision, however, I think it was taken for the wrong reasons – electoral fears instead of rational political thought of the future)
German indecision during the Libyan revolution has equally left the EU hovering between action and inaction. It is remarkable to see that France and the UK, even though they for many many years disagreed on virtually every decision, have decided to act together to help the anti-Qaddafi forces.
Also, with regards to Schengen, Germany should have stepped in and told Italy and France off – because Schengen is one of the greatest achievements we Europeans can enjoy today and a few thousand desperate Africans should not be blamed for bringing down this agreement. Obviously the reasons are others – trying to tell people that a country like Italy, counting almost 60m people, is unable to cope with an influx of 20.000 people, is simply ridiculous. Yes, it’s not fair that the littoral countries of the Mediterranean have to cope with refugees from Africa whereas the northern MS simply decline to help – this is another issue that clearly shows that the EU lacks a spirit of solidarity and common responsibility.
Talking about Greece – the longer the problem drags on, the more I am becoming convinced that there is little all MS can do to help Hellas. This is for one simple reason: The country is simply not going to be able to repay its debt unless you prolong the time frame and cut its debts by maybe up to 70%. Germany’s chancellor could, if she wanted to really lead Europe, make this clear and advocate a structured default for Greece which would save all other Eurozone members a lot of money that could instead be used to help bring about investments and infrastructural modernisation instead of trying to pay off Greece’s interest rates.
One last comment…sometimes I really wish we could have the founding fathers of the European Communities back…people like Schumann, Adenauer, but also Delors or Kohl would do us good nowadays..
I do agree with the conlusion that a credible and strong leadership on the European level is more than necessary. But as well as I agree to this fact I don’t get the point why this leadership only should (or in the context of your article ‘could’) be eqivalent to a strong national leadership. The choice of Angela Merkel can easyly subsumed with the strength and power of Germanys economy in the European single market. But this would insist partial blindness for economic processes on European level.
As we have seen in the past, the Maastricht-criteria (which were indisputable the core-criteria for joining the single market and the common currency) were broken not only by countries with low efficient economies. Especially the German and French gouvernments undermined the criteria by avoiding proceedings against contract violations.
Are those governments still able to make credible commitments in an intergouvernmental context concerning the crisis of Greek and other MS? I don’t think so. We should pay attention on the reasons of German economic growth (even during a time of recession in other MS!). German economy is based on exports (as can be seen in Germanys excessive export surplus) and lacking in Germanys domestic market.
The results of the German export surplus leads other (eventually smaller ) MS to an extreme import surplus. To put it in a nutshell: The German economy policy has an (potentially negative) effect on other MS economies which should not be underestimated. A solution can surely not be found on the intergovernmental level as the German Chancellor is ( for understandable reasons) not willing to cut Germanys growth for the European single markets healing.
As the Maastricht-criteria (in some kind of integration-delusion) and the ‘no-bailout’-clause ( to open a bigger amount of solution possibilities during the financial crisis in a growing amount of MS) have been watered-down by few national governments there would be ( again) no credible intergovernmental leadership of one or few MS. The solution can only be found on supranational level. National positions only can be united through the intervention of the European Commission as European technocratic element and the European Parliament to avoid an enlargement of democracy deficits in the process of European single markets consolidation.