- German chancellor Angela Merkel reacts to Ronald Pofalla,
chief of staff at the chancellery, during the final parliamentary debate
of a ¤750bn eurozone rescue package in Berlin. Photograph: Markus
Schreiber/AP
- At a recent summit of European leaders in Brussels, Angela
Merkel was feeling tetchy.
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- As the 27 government chiefs wrestled with compulsory
jobs targets for the decade ahead, the German chancellor balked when asked
to stick to the same employment rate as everyone else.
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- "Not all the member states will reach that target,"
she answered, according to a note of the summit made available to the Guardian.
"If some don't go so far, does this mean Germany has to [go further]?"
No one asked Berlin to do more than its partners. But Merkel suspected
otherwise. The discussion turned to climate change targets. Again Merkel
complained. Germany, she signalled, was getting a raw deal in Europe, a
sentiment reinforced by senior people in her entourage such as Uwe Corsepius,
her influential European adviser.
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- The prickliness is symptomatic of the change in how Berlin
sees the EU. For 50 years, Europe has been Germany's passport to peace,
prosperity and power. When Germany pursued its national interests, it did
so effectively, benignly and called it "Europa". Those days are
over. The German elite feels maligned and misunderstood. In public, and
much more frankly in private, senior figures talk of robustly asserting
the German national interest.
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- "It may be new for Europe that Germany is representing
its interests with new vigour," said Thomas de Maizière, the
interior minister and a Merkel confidant. "But for Britain, France
or Italy, this was always a matter of course."
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- "The mood among the Germans is quite defensive.
They feel people are ganging up on them," said an EU ambassador.
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- A senior official in Brussels who deals regularly with
Merkel added: "The love affair [with Europe] is over. When I meet
German journalists, they ask 'what is the added value of Europe for Germany'."
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- The change - from pushing Europe forward to balking at
the sacrifices Germany has to make - is a tectonic shift in the EU.
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- Nowhere has the new approach been more striking than
in the euro crisis, where Merkel's mixture of hectoring and hesitation
has shocked fellow EU leaders and generated mutual recrimination. The financial
crisis exposed fundamental differences in outlook between northern and
southern Europe, and conflicts of national interest between Germany and
France. Egged on by both the tabloids and quality newspapers engaging in
an orgy of Greece-bashing and injured outrage verging on self-pity, Berlin
is slumped in surly resentment at being seen as the cashpoint for cash-strapped
southern Europeans.
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- Merkel sees the crisis as not only about finance and
economics, but as a clash of ideas, values and cultures. The new regime
of penalties and punishments she is demanding for the eurozone, she told
the German parliament, has to be geared to the strong and not to the weak.
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- The German rancour has, in turn, unleashed widespread
grievances against Berlin across much of the EU. Last week the head of
the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, delivered an unusual
public tirade against Germany, calling Merkel "naive" over her
proposals to resolve the euro debacle. He blasted the German elite for
its perceived failure to lead public opinion in the worst crisis to hit
Europe in 20 years.
- The hostility cuts both ways. Long the champion of the
European commission, Berlin is now its biggest critic.
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- Relations between Paris and Berlin have become so sour
that, according to media reports, Merkel amuses her entourage by mockingly
imitating Nicolas Sarkozy, while the French president brags to his team
how he has bested the German chancellor.
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- De Maizière shrugged off the criticism and suggested
that the rest of the EU would have to learn to live with a Germany less
shy about putting itself first: "We are also using new language in
putting our arguments. We have to get used to this. The biggest net payer
into the EU budget has to defend its interests."
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- Other officials privately put the case more bluntly:
"If Germany pays, Germany decides."
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- The "new language" is evident from Merkel's
recent speeches in which she has declared that the euro is in danger, that
the future of the EU is at stake, that Europe is in the throes of an existential
crisis.
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- The uncharacteristic alarmism is seen by many as a sign
of weakness. Her coalition government of Christian democrats and liberals
is flagging. She lost a major regional election last month. Two big figures
from her party have just resigned: Horst Köhler, the German head of
state, and Roland Koch, a CDU regional party baron. Her relationship with
the key politician in her cabinet, Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance
minister, is poor.
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- Merkel is understood to believe that she needs to take
a tough "Germany first" position on the euro crisis to guard
against the emergence of a new nationalism and hard right populism. There
is no extreme right in Germany to compare with the xenophobia represented
by parties prospering in Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France
or Italy. For historical reasons the emergence of a powerful far right
in Germany would be seen internationally as a problem much greater than
elsewhere.
- Merkel also knows that Germany, as Europe's economic
powerhouse and top exporter, is the biggest beneficiary of the EU's single
currency and single market.
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- The euro was modelled on the mark. The European Central
Bank in Frankfurt was created as a clone of the Bundesbank. But the nightmare
for Berlin is that the ¤750bn package agreed last month to save
the euro means that the monetary union is no longer made in Germany.
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- A large country of small towns and family-run businesses,
Germany saves around ¤10bn a year in transaction costs from selling
its goods to a captive European market because of the euro. But Merkel
has failed to sell the euro to the Germans.
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- "There's no explanation here of why the euro is
good for Germany. That's why there's such uncertainty over Europe,"
said Klaus Barthel, an opposition Social Democrat MP. "It's much easier
to get applause if you say we Germans always have to pay. National grievances
are being encouraged."
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- "The Germans seem to think they're being penalised
for success," said the EU ambassador.
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- Another senior diplomat involved in the weekly meetings
of ambassadors in Brussels said he was always surprised at German inflexibility
in the constant exercise in compromise that is modern Europe: "The
Brits get the reputation for being eurosceptics. But it's the British and
the French who do the real negotiating. The Germans never negotiate. It's
not their habit."
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- Although Germany can often look to the Austrians, Finns,
or Dutch for support, increasingly Angela Merkel cuts a lonely figure in
Europe. "In the history of the European Union," said Charles
Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform thinktank, "I've
never seen Germany so isolated before."
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