One Size Fits Germany

I agree with Kai Weiss’s thesis in this piece at CapX:

A one-size-fits-all approach from the Commission, along with the need to reach unanimity among member states is, after all, still the preferred path for action at a European level. However, with 28 different voices round the table, reaching unanimity has understandably become more and more difficult.

The refugee crisis of recent years is a case in point. Heads of state and EU officials have been talking about a “European solution” for many years, with very little real progress. Securing the bloc’s external borders and finding a fair but humane way to deal with a complex situation has proven out of the organisation’s reach.

Foreign policy is another example. Of course, there is a big debate over how far Brussels should supersede national governments in this area – thankfully that has meant the more swivel-eyed federalists’ plans for a European army have been swiftly rebutted by a chorus of opposing member states.

At the same time, it’s striking how member states have been unable to agree on even the smallest matters, like when the EU wanted to issue a joint statement to support Juan Guaidó as the rightful president of Venezuela – in the end Brussels decided it had no opinion on the matter, although individual governments have made their views clear.

The Commission’s one-size-fits-all solutions have alienated many countries. As Brussels, together with the infamous Franco-German engine, has pushed for ever more integration over the decades, other countries that are more sceptical about giving up their sovereignty have felt pressured towards accepting “ever closer union”.

The backlash to this over-federalisation of Europe has, of course, been most keenly felt in the UK, which has now decided to forge its own path (if its government ever actually gets round to leaving).

but I don’t think he really appreciates the problem. The EU isn’t pursuing a “one size fits all” strategy. It’s pursuing a “one size fits Germany” strategy. That is evident from the demonstrations, some violent, that continue to occur every weekend in France and have been doing so for six months. It is evident from the surge of the Brexit Party in the United Kingdom.

Germany for its part continues to pursue its nearly two century project of Germanizing Europe. Don’t believe it? Let the EU adopt Hungarian as its common language and watch the squawking from the Germans. The idea isn’t as nuts as it sounds. Jakob Grimm who, in addition to collecting fairy tales was also a founder of modern linguistics, proposed that Hungarian should be the international language on the grounds that its grammar was simple and regular and it didn’t have any difficult to pronounce sounds.A one-size-fits-all approach from the Commission, along with the need to reach unanimity among member states is, after all, still the preferred path for action at a European level. However, with 28 different voices round the table, reaching unanimity has understandably become more and more difficult.

The refugee crisis of recent years is a case in point. Heads of state and EU officials have been talking about a “European solution” for many years, with very little real progress. Securing the bloc’s external borders and finding a fair but humane way to deal with a complex situation has proven out of the organisation’s reach.

Foreign policy is another example. Of course, there is a big debate over how far Brussels should supersede national governments in this area – thankfully that has meant the more swivel-eyed federalists’ plans for a European army have been swiftly rebutted by a chorus of opposing member states.

At the same time, it’s striking how member states have been unable to agree on even the smallest matters, like when the EU wanted to issue a joint statement to support Juan Guaidó as the rightful president of Venezuela – in the end Brussels decided it had no opinion on the matter, although individual governments have made their views clear.

The Commission’s one-size-fits-all solutions have alienated many countries. As Brussels, together with the infamous Franco-German engine, has pushed for ever more integration over the decades, other countries that are more sceptical about giving up their sovereignty have felt pressured towards accepting “ever closer union”.

The backlash to this over-federalisation of Europe has, of course, been most keenly felt in the UK, which has now decided to forge its own path (if its government ever actually gets round to leaving).r

At no time has this been more evident than in the treatment of Greece. That Greece, with an economy still in the thralls of a post-colonial lack of capital investment, was utterly unsuited to adopt the euro was obvious from the start. The only way that could work is if the Greeks consumed German goods while the Germans poured money into Greece. The Greeks held up their part of the deal while the Germans declined to live up to theirs, preferring instead to complain about Greek profligacy and sloth (by comparison with German thrift and industry). That the entire policy with respect to Greece was targeted at propping up insolvent German banks does not seem to have occurred to the Germans.