If we take the reports in many European countries at face value, Germany is on the verge of collapse, despite its prosperity. Some believe that the German leap into the abyss is taking all of Europe with it. One consolation for Berliners is that they feel “poor but sexy,” as one former mayor of the city put it. But even those certainties are shaken. On Sunday, the outgoing Financial Times correspondent in the German capital ruled that Berlin is on the decline. And that it is becoming “rich but boring”. However, things are not that simple. Germany did not become the “locomotive of Europe” overnight. And it will not collapse overnight. But to understand the present, it is worth considering the past. At least the recent past.

Travel back to the 1990s

Until the reunification in 1990, the West Germany of the time was a nice country under tutelage. Its economic power gave it soft power, but not the ability to formulate an autonomous policy. And by no means the right to override Europe’s great ‘political laboratories’, Great Britain and France. But partition was a quirk of history that could not continue forever. With the “2+4” treaty, which was essentially a late peace treaty, the Allies gave up their sovereign rights on German territory and after a few years the American elites began to demand more “leadership” from Berlin. The issue was even raised by “Democratic” presidents such as Bill Clinton. German ‘leadership’ for Europe? The Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was historically called upon to make it clear that “Germany will also serve its own interests, like any other country”, which probably did not excite French President Jacques Chirac at the time. “The international press saw ‘dysfunctions’ in the Franco-German axis of the EU. The situation improved somewhat after a visit by Chirac to idyllic Potsdam, but the objections to Franco-German ‘irregularities’ continued, not to say have not ceased to this day. As much as the British Economist worried in the late 1990s that Germany was “the sick man of Europe” (“The sick man of Europe”) who wants but cannot take the lead, it was equally anxious in 2013 because Germany is “the reluctant hegemon” (“The reluctant hegemon”) who can but does not want to take responsibility.

Europe’s introversion

The Americans know it well, the Germans are now consolidating it: A great power is criticized when it leads, but also when it does not lead. When it intervenes, but also when it remains inactive. It is certain that the government that will emerge from the February elections does not imagine Germany as a “big Switzerland” that rests on its export performance and does not get involved in political issues. But the problem is not so much Germany’s reluctance to take a leading role in Europe as the fact that Europe as a whole is divesting itself of its leading role and sinking into a thankless and dead-end introversion. Proof: almost none of the six founding member countries of the former EEC currently has a stable and strong government. The only exception is humble but wealthy Luxembourg, where Christian Democrat Luc Frieden is completing one year in office and no one has any intention of removing him. Undoubtedly, Luxembourg’s international clout is greater than its size. That is why the Luxembourg government recently signed a cooperation agreement with the USA in the field of space technology (!). But, let’s be honest: Europe needs a more robust leadership if it really wants to meet modern challenges.

Source: DW