Berlin's post-Lisbon wait-and-see approach is the source of growing impatience in Germany, writes DEREK SCALLYin Berlin
GERMANY’S NEW foreign minister Guido Westerwelle ticks all the right boxes when he speaks of the European Union.
At a meeting with foreign journalists in Berlin, he cited the new government’s “huge interest” in maintaining continuity in EU policies – including “treating small and medium-sized countries with respect”.
As a politician born in 1961, the year the Berlin Wall sealed Cold War divisions, Westerwelle’s priority is to “complete the reconciliation work” with Germany’s eastern neighbours.
“Only when our generation, one which didn’t starve or experience war, has internalised Europe can the EU become an enduring success,” he says.
Looking towards Brussels, Westerwelle speaks of his Herzblut – his heartfelt passion – for the European project.
But ask for a concrete project into which he thinks the post-Lisbon Treaty EU should channel its energy and Westerwelle plays for time.
“Every treaty needs treaty practice and that has yet to develop,” he says.
After almost a decade haggling over Lisbon, Berlin’s post-ratification wait-and-see approach is the source of growing impatience in Germany.
Think-tanks grumble that jockeying for power in reformed EU institutions has exposed the policy vacuum at the heart of post-Lisbon Europe.
“During the discussion about the Lisbon Treaty there was talk that when this was all over the new projects could begin,” said Dominik Hierlemann of the Bertelsmann Foundation.
“Not having the Lisbon Treaty discussion around any more has made clear that there are no new projects. We have no one with the guts to make a start.”
The programme for government of the new Berlin administration promises “concrete projects in the areas of energy policy, banking, and EU security and defence policy”, but goes into detail on just one: cut EU bureaucracy by a quarter by 2012.
Officials close to Chancellor Angela Merkel say they are anxious to push a new “Agenda 2020” to increase the union’s economic competitiveness.
Learning from the failed Lisbon agenda, Berlin says any successor plan should concentrate on a maximum of five areas of improvement. Yet the new government has made little effort so far to go beyond off-the-record briefings and discuss this and other EU ambitions with voters.
When Timemagazine put Merkel on its cover as Frau Europa last month, it claimed the German leader holds more power than any other premier in Europe at present. But the magazine struggled and eventually failed to answer the question it posed: what she will do with her power?
Germany’s new European commissioner, Günther Oettinger, was not a choice that inspired confidence back home. Far from a plum promotion, the Brussels job was seen as Merkel sidelining a little-loved and much-mocked political rival.
It’s early days for Merkel’s second term and things might yet change, with several important EU positions likely to be filled by Germans in the coming years.
France has reportedly agreed to back Bundesbank president Axel Weber to head the European Central Bank when the position becomes vacant next year.
Having a Bundesbank hand on the wheel of the euro zone might help ease German fears over the single currency stoked up by the Greek crisis, namely that Germans are chained to spendthrift neighbours.
Indeed popular German opposition to assisting Greece, and countless cliches about “southern European tendencies”, could be symptomatic of a shift in how Germany views the EU.
“One should remember that it was the German ‘abnormality’ that was the main driving force for European integration,” notes Ulrike Guérot, Berlin head of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “But the country that was once the lubricant of the integration process, and profited greatly from it, has now as Europe’s supposed paymaster, a tendency to fall into the role of the victim, the laggard or even the European inhibitor.”
As in Ireland, EU-critical opinions have become a fashionable quality in some German circles.
Unlike in Ireland, however, the German elite has not been shocked by a negative EU referendum result into acknowledging that ignorance of the EU can fester into anti-EU sentiment.
Today’s visit to Dublin of Germany’s minister for European affairs, Werner Hoyer, is a chance to pin down Germany’s ambitions in a post-Lisbon EU.