This is my first entry in the Eurozone 2013 blog. Based in Berlin, in the following months I will comment on the steps taken by EU leaders to reform the Eurozone from the German capital, and will include my observations on the German euro debate.
As it happens, the German President, Joachim Gauck, has just given his long-awaited Europe speech in Berlin. Surely, the outside observer might think, his speech was only one of many interventions in a Europe debate in full-swing in Germany. After all, this is a key country when it comes to fixing economic and monetary union (EMU), with more major steps that will affect the direction and functioning of the eurozone and the overall EU likely to be taken this year. Surely, one might think, in a year of federal elections there will be competing political and economic visions on the future of Europe, and the opposition parties will want to mobilize their respective constituencies in the battle for the chancellery.
You will be surprised to hear that compared to what is at stake, and contrary to what we have seen in the French 2012 presidential as well as in the 2013 Italian election campaign: Germans so far are not fretting about Europe.
I see three main reasons for Europe being largely absent from the campaign so far:
1. Crisis, what crisis? The crisis is not making the headlines, at least for the moment. And with the German economy still doing well, a majority of Germans – unlike fellow EU citizens in other countries – simply do not feel the impact of the crisis.
2. The Merkel factor. Germans tend to trust Angela Merkel’s ability to do what is necessary to help the countries in crisis to recover (and there is a sense of solidarity by now), and to keep an eye on Germany’s interests when negotiating the future make-up of the euro governance with the other euro members.
3. The consensus country. Because of 1) and 2), all opposition parties struggle to challenge Angela Merkel’s conservative party. Adding to this is that Germans currently seem to like the idea of a ‘grand’ coalition of Conservatives and Social Democrats, so there is a tactical temptation for the Social Democrats not to bark too loudly.
Going back to the president’s speech; it is unlikely to trigger a euro debate. The president in the German system does not have political clout and by custom does not get involved in politics. In today’s speech, President Gauck did not cross this line. But the office is traditionally used to shape fundamental debates, and I believe this speech will be influencing the parameters of the Europe debate among the elites in the months to come.
Indeed, the president presented some fresh thinking. Gauck, a pastor and civil rights activist in the German Democratic Republic, put Europe’s citizens at the centre of his hour-long speech. Hardly did he touch on the crisis, on the role of governments, and on detailed suggestions on how to make the European Union work better.
He must have felt that in Germany and across Europe, citizens feel disempowered by the crisis, by nonstop rhetoric that makes them fearful, by complex and technical measures difficult to grasp, and by diplomats negotiating about their future behind closed doors.
Gauck’s language therefore was a language of empowerment. This was the vision of a democrat, a free citizen of Europe, wanting to encourage Europe’s citizens to live up to the task of being citizens in a European res publica, learning to shape their future together.
