Berlin Rules

Europe and the German Way

Paul Lever, Sir Paul Lever

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781784539290
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786721815
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the second half of the twentieth century, Germany became the dominant political and economic power in Europe – and the arbiter of all important EU decisions. Yet Germany's leadership of the EU is geared principally to the defence of German national interests. Germany exercises power in order to protect the German economy and to enable it to play an influential role in the wider world. Beyond that there is no underlying vision or purpose.

In this book, former British ambassador in Berlin Paul Lever provides a unique insight into modern Germany. He shows how the country's history has influenced its current economic and political structures and provides important perspectives on its likely future challenges and choices, especially in the context of the 2015 refugee crisis which saw over 1 million immigrants offered a home in Germany.

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, this book will be essential reading and suggests the future shape of a Germany dominated Europe.

Sir Paul Lever was British ambassador to Germany from 1997 to 2003. During his earlier diplomatic career he specialised in European political, economic and security issues. His postings included service in NATO, in the European Commission, as chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and as EU and economic director in the Foreign Office. From 2004 to 2010 he was chairman of the Royal United Services Institute.

‘In this cool, shrewd and richly detailed account of Germany in Europe, a former British ambassador analyses Berlin’s rise to dominance. Without panic or illusion, Paul Lever is mercilessly clear about the decline of French influence in the EU, leaving Mrs Merkel’s Germany effectively in control of a Union whose structures closely reflect Germany’s own. “The EU is Germany writ large.” But Paul Lever, confident in German democracy, thinks that this power will not be misused, not least because Germany has no clear idea of how the EU should develop. Europe suits Mrs Merkel as it is, and Lever – contrary to current pessimism and alarm – predicts that in 20 years the European Union will not be radically different.’

Neal Ascherson

‘Timely and enlightening, Paul Lever’s insightful book tells us why Germany is vital to Europe and why Europe is so essential to Germany.’

Peter Mandelson

‘Paul Lever has had a long and close relationship with Germany, and knows it and its leaders well. His book is required reading in Britain, where we are astonishingly ill-informed about the country that will matter most to us as we negotiate our exit from the European Union.’

Lord Jay of Ewelme

‘Few people can claim that their views on the EU’s future, the UK’s decision to leave and the priorities of the key player in the coming negotiations, i.e., Germany were formed on the basis of a long diplomatic career. Having been “our man” in Berlin at a time when British German relations were closer than they had ever been, Paul Lever can make that claim and his insights cannot be ignored by the politicians, diplomats and negotiators who will be charged with charting our, as well as the EU’s, future in the next few years. Germany has succeeded in shaping the EU in its own image. Economic advantage and minimising competition trumps grander visions of military or diplomatic influence on the world stage. What will matter in the years to come is who will be in the EU and the single currency and what the EU decides to do as well as what it decides not to do. Germany is the key player in all these decisions.’

Gisela Stuart MP

‘Paul Lever’s readable and dispassionate account of modern Germany and what informs and drives its politics and foreign policy should be required reading for UK policy makers as they try to work out what Brexit means for us and our future relations with Europe as well as anyone who would like to understand Europe’s most important nation better.’

Ben Bradshaw MP

Berlin Rules

Europe and the German Way

Paul Lever

Published in 2017 by

I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd

London • New York

www.ibtauris.com

Copyright © 2017 Paul Lever

The right of Paul Lever to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

ISBN: 978 1 78453 929 0

eISBN: 978 1 78672 181 5

ePDF: 978 1 78673 181 4

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

Typeset by JCS Publishing Services Ltd, jcs-publishing.co.uk

Contents

Preface

1 Now We’re Speaking German

2 It’s the Economy, Stupid

3 Proud of the F Word

4 A Land Without a Past

5 Looking After the Relations

6 The Ever-Closer Union

7 Will the EU Army Ever March?

8 The Shape of Things to Come

For Patricia

Preface

Following the referendum of 23 June 2016, the principal preoccupation of the British government for the next ten years or so will be to secure a satisfactory withdrawal from the European Union and to find a new place in the wider world outside it.

When we in the United Kingdom applied for membership of the European Economic Community (as it then was) in 1961, it was France that decided whether, and if so on what terms, we should be allowed to join. President de Gaulle’s initial ‘Non’ was accepted without demur by the five other member states. So too was President Pompidou’s subsequent willingness to open negotiations.

During those negotiations it was French concerns and interests which set the agenda. The European Commission was responsible for the talks themselves and for the technical preparatory work. But it operated on the basis of a mandate which was shaped largely by the French government.

Now that we are leaving, it is Germany that is in charge. The 27 other member states will agree the framework within which the negotiations will take place. But it is Germany whose voice will be decisive. The German government will effectively determine what sort of trade agreement Britain will be able to conclude with the entity which accounts for just under 50 per cent of its exports. This element of our economic fate will be in German hands.

There have been occasions in the recent past when Germany has exercised power in a way which was, to put it mildly, not appreciated by the British government of the day. Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 about the terms for German reunification dismayed British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who was at the time determined to try to stop it. The German government’s refusal in 1992 to intervene when Britain was forced to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism irritated Thatcher’s successor John Major. But on the whole Germany has hitherto been an ally and a partner with whom we share many interests and instincts.

For the British ministers and officials in charge of our withdrawal from the EU, dealing with Germany as an adversary (for the negotiations will be largely adversarial in character) will be a novel experience. We will face directly the reality of German power in Europe.

We will face it in other ways as well. Germany not only dominates economic policy making in the EU, it also increasingly takes the lead on international issues. How the EU deals in the future with, for example, Russia and Turkey will be decided essentially in Berlin. For the United States, Germany will be the European power of prime interest and importance, as it will for China, India and Brazil.

Britain outside the EU will have to adjust to this new reality. We will still be a significant player in the world. Our permanent membership of the Security Council, our relationships with other English-speaking countries, our role in NATO and our military capabilities will remain important assets. But we will not have the authority or be able to exercise the leadership that Germany will have.

Not only will Germany’s voice be decisive in shaping the terms of Britain’s divorce from the EU. Germany will also determine how the EU itself will develop after we leave. Its membership, its powers and its policies will reflect the choices and priorities of the German government; and these in turn will be a product of Germany’s history, its social and political structures and, above all, of its economic interests. Any forecast of how the EU may look in 20 or so years’ time needs to be rooted in an awareness of these interests; as well as in an understanding not just of what German politicians say about Europe, but of how they behave within it.

* * *

The United Kingdom’s relations with Europe, in both the political and economic fields, dominated much of my professional life. I was in Brussels when we signed the Treaty of Accession on 22 January 1972 – as was my future wife, whose job it was to mop off the ink which an irate British woman, a proto-UKIP-er perhaps, had thrown over the British Prime Minister’s suit for his (as the woman saw it) surrender of national sovereignty. I served in the 1980s in the European Commission. In the 1990s I was the senior Foreign Office official dealing with the EU. From 1997 to 2003 I was the British ambassador to Germany.

Throughout this time I watched Germany’s power grow, and overall I have admired the way senior German politicians have used it. Some, like Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, have been towering personalities. Others, like Angela Merkel, have more modest virtues. But nearly all of them have been people of substance and of distinction.

I enjoyed too nearly 40 years of dealing with German officials. Cheerful, open and competent, they were the best of colleagues with whom to try to tackle a common problem and the best of company outside the office. Many of them have become personal friends.

I am sorry that, as Britain and Germany will in the future have less to talk about together, my successors in the Foreign Office will probably not enjoy the same easy relationship with their German counterparts.

German power is unique in that it is not based on military might and is not something which Germany’s own leaders take pride in or celebrate. It is nonetheless the underlying reality of Europe today. I hope that this book is a small contribution to understanding it.

one

Now We’re Speaking German

In November 2011 a German politician, little known outside his home country, achieved his Andy Warhol ration of 15 minutes of fame by boasting in a speech that ‘Jetzt auf einmal wird in Europa deutsch gesprochen’ (‘Now suddenly Europe is speaking German’).

Volker Kauder, the leader of the parliamentary group of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, made clear that he was speaking figuratively not literally. He was not referring to the use of the German language: rather he meant that the German government’s view on how to achieve economic stability within the eurozone – namely by eliminating budget deficits, raising taxes and reducing public expenditure – was now shared by all other European governments.

He was right on both counts. A survey published a few weeks after his speech showed that in the five previous years the number of pupils at European schools studying German as a foreign language had declined dramatically. In the Netherlands, for example, they had decreased from 86 per cent to 44 per cent. (In Britain the figures are even lower – to the point where some head teachers have begun talking about the likely extinction of German as a subject taught in British schools.) In the same month, at the height of the eurozone financial crisis, the decision was taken at a European Council meeting to begin negotiations for the so-called Treaty of Fiscal Union. The rules set out in the treaty were precisely those which the German government had long been advocating: binding legal commitments to balanced national budgets and to strict limits on the size of national debt and national deficits. There was speculation that once the treaty was in force Germany might be more open to other ideas for dealing with the crisis, such as eurobonds or more intervention by the European Central Bank. But no commitment of this kind was given by the German government. The message from the decision was clear: if the euro needed to be saved, it would be saved on German terms.

The treaty was eventually signed in March 2012 (by all the members of the EU except the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic). It established in legally binding form the context within which members of the eurozone have to implement their fiscal and budgetary policies, and it provided for supervision and sanctions if they fail to respect its rules. It reflects a view, not unique to Germany but prominently championed by successive German governments, of how national economies should be organised. Henceforth this view will govern the whole of the eurozone. No deviation from it will be allowed.

Since 2012 Germany’s domination of policy making in the EU has increased still further. In the succession of crises which have hit Europe – Greece’s bankruptcy, Ukraine, the refugee influx – it is Germany which has provided the solutions (such as they are) and Germany which has taken the lead in getting them implemented. It was Germany too which set the rules for the renegotiation of the terms of Britain’s membership, and Germany’s will be the determining voice in deciding what sort of deal the EU will offer now that Britain has decided to leave.

This is, for Germany, a golden age of power. It coincides, as it happens, with German success in the field which Europe’s citizens care most about, namely football. In 2013 two German teams, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, contested the final of th...

Table of contents

• Author bio