• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

WHat doEs GERMaNY tHiNk aboUt europE? Edited by Ulrike Guérot and Jacqueline Hénard aboUt ECFR The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent, effective and values-based European foreign policy. ECFR has developed a strategy with three distinctive elements that define its activities: •a pan-European Council. ECFR has brought together a distinguished Council of over one hundred Members - politicians, decision makers, thinkers and business people from the EU’s member states and candidate countries - which meets once a year as a full body. Through geographical and thematic task forces, members provide ECFR staff with advice and feedback on policy ideas and help with ECFR’s activities within their own countries. The Council is chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer and Mabel van Oranje. • a physical presence in the main EU member states. ECFR, uniquely among European think-tanks, has offices in Berlin, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome and Sofia. In the future ECFR plans to open offices in Warsaw and Brussels. Our offices are platforms for research, debate, advocacy and communications. • a distinctive research and policy development process. ECFR has brought together a team of distinguished researchers and practitioners from all over Europe to advance its objectives through innovative projects with a pan-European focus. ECFR’s activities include primary research, publication of policy reports, private meetings and public debates, ‘friends of ECFR’ gatherings in EU capitals and outreach to strategic media outlets. ECFR is backed by the Soros Foundations Network, the Spanish foundation FRIDE (La Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior), the Bulgarian Communitas Foundation, the Italian UniCredit group and the Stiftung Mercator. ECFR works in partnership with other organisations but does not make grants to individuals or institutions. www.ecfr.eu WHAT DOES GERMANY THINK AbOuT EuropE? Edited by ulrike Guérot and Jacqueline Hénard The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. This paper, like all publications of the European Council on Foreign Relations, represents only the views of its authors. The European Council on Foreign Relations does not take collective positions. This paper, like all publications of the European Council on Foreign Relations, represents only the views of its authors. Copyright of this publication is held by the European Council on Foreign Relations. You may not copy, reproduce, republish or circulate in any way the content from this publication except for your own personal and non-commercial use. Any other use requires the prior written permission of the European Council on Foreign Relations. © ECFR June 2011. ISBN: 978-1-906538-41-5 Published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 35 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9JA, United Kingdom [email protected] Contents Introduction 5 ECONOMICS 11 1. Michael Wohlgemuth 13 Kant was no stickler for principles 2. Henrik Enderlein 19 More faith in the euro pOLITICS 25 3. Christian Schmidt 27 Is Europe a community of fate? 4. Viola von Cramon 33 Europe’s future is sustainable LAW 39 5. Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz and Christian Hillgruber 41 Should Karlsruhe be the guardian of the Basic Law? 6. Christian Calliess 47 How much of the German constitution can the EU take? MEDIA 53 7. Cornelia bolesch 55 A potpourri of clichés 8. Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger 61 Are the tabloids right? SOCIETY 67 9. Claus Leggewie 69 The young like it green 10. Alexander Cammann 75 Happy Europe AFTERWORD 81 Jürgen Habermas 83 A pact for or against Europe? About the authors 90 Acknowledgements 93 Ulrike Guérot and Jacqueline Hénard Introduction At first glance, “What does Germany think about Europe?” might seem a strange question. However, it is one that Germany’s neighbours are increasingly asking themselves – and understandably so. After many years at the heart of the European project, Germany seems to have lost interest in it. The primacy that Europe once assumed in German foreign policy has gone. Berlin now coolly calculates the costs of integration and views its European future with unromantic sobriety. Nobody there still seems to believe in the idea of “ever closer union”, as it was enshrined in the Treaty of Maastricht. Other European countries view this change of heart in their midst with feelings that range from irritation to concern. What do the Germans want? What do they think about European integration? Is there any vision left? The frustration with Berlin reached a peak in May 2010, when help for Greece was agonisingly slow to materialise. Ever since then, Germany has been acting like the strict economic taskmaster of Europe, attracting unfavourable headlines across the continent in the process. Less than a year after the Greek crisis, Berlin again provoked bemusement and anger by distancing itself politically from its European (and Atlantic) allies during the Libya crisis. More recently still, its abrupt abandonment of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster upset some of Germany’s friends. Meanwhile, Germany’s relations with the so-called BRIC states are intensifying. Some Europeans now fear that Berlin sees its future with the BRICs rather than with Brussels. British historian Niall Ferguson recently summed up a widely held sentiment when he wrote that, in the future, people 1 will say it was Germany that killed Europe. 1 Niall Ferguson, “Murder on the EU Express”, Newsweek, 3 April 2011, available at http://www.newsweek. com/2011/04/03/murder-on-the-eu-express.html. 5 What is missing amid the recrimination is understanding. Just as German policymakers have failed to grasp why their behaviour is alienating their European counterparts, Germany’s neighbours do not fully understand the shifting dynamics within that country that are underpinning decisions in Berlin. There has been, as a recent ECFR policy brief argued, a “dialogue of the deaf”.2 The aim of this anthology is to break out of that dialogue, and to help overcome the current, mutual sense of incomprehension by facilitating a better understanding of Germany from the inside out. It seeks to explain what currently motivates Germany, what it thinks about Europe and why the debate has become so difficult. To do this, we have brought together 11 leading figures from various backgrounds, who attempt to explain the German debate about Europe in five sections: economics, politics, law, media and society. In each case, we wanted to try to bring out the fault lines in the debate, and have therefore selected two contributors with contrasting views. In particular, we have tried to give space both to the new Eurosceptic voices in Germany and to those who defend the EU and argue that Germany has benefited from the single currency. Of course, Germany is not alone in its changing attitudes to Europe. In this era of crisis, the debate over the common project has become more difficult in all European countries, and nationalist sentiments are on the rise everywhere. But the shift in Germany is particularly noteworthy for two reasons. Firstly, because of that nation’s size and consequent economic and political weight. What Germany thinks inevitably has huge consequences for Europe. Secondly, the change is remarkable because it represents such a departure from Germany’s historical approach to Europe and its own role within it. Until reunification, and well after it, European integration was effectively part of the Federal Republic’s raison d’état. Germany’s interests overlapped with those of Europe and prominent German politicians dreamed of a European federal state. However, in recent years, Germany has increasingly seen itself as “normal” and, having overcome the burden of history, felt it should be able to talk about its own interests – as other countries do. Fundamental changes in its external relations were well underway before the euro crisis began. In foreign policy terms, participation in the 1999 Kosovo 2 See Ulrike Guérot and Mark Leonard‚ The New German Question: How Europe can get the Germany it needs, European Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Brief, May 2011, available at http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR30_ 6 GERMANY_AW.pdf war was the first major shift from established positions, and triggered an important debate in Germany that linked responsibility for the past and the future. Germany’s NATO partners welcomed its participation in the operation as a signal that Germany was assuming the responsibilities that came with its size and economic power. That “normalisation” in foreign policy was mirrored in the domestic sphere. After a decade of passionate internal debates on national identity and memory politics following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany began taking more decisions based on domestic considerations and its global economic interests, rather than subsuming these interests in the common European good. When the financial crisis hit in 2008 therefore, it intensified a recently adopted view of Europe as a source of burdens and obligations. The German public seemed increasingly certain that it was doing everything right – limiting debt, pursuing austerity and focusing on exports – and it became frustrated by others’ failure to behave similarly. It apparently occurred to few people that the German government could be part of the problem or that German solutions might not work in other countries. While Germany’s European partners waited to be “saved” by Germany, Germany effectively wanted to be “saved” from Europe.3 An opinion poll conducted by the Allensbach Institute in January 2011 found that more than 50 percent of Germans have little to no faith in the EU, and over 70 percent do not see Europe as the future of Germany – a finding that almost all the authors in this collection cite.

Load more

  104

Copy Link