As part of the ’Reinventing Europe‘ project, ECFR is publishing a series of papers on the national debates within EU member states over the crisis and the future direction of Europe. In the sixth of the series Ulrike Guérot analyses the situation in Germany ahead of the Constitutional Court’s crucial ESM verdict on 12th September.

Over the last couple of years the German debate over the euro crisis has been characterised as over-simplistic and tending to blame the debtor countries of Southern Europe for their own plight. Berlin’s political response has been seen as reactive and lacking in the necessary vision to end the crisis. Now, however, there are clear signs that the debate over Europe is shifting focus. Angela Merkel’s government is making an effort to move the debate away from being nationalist and populist, and towards being more constructive and ambitious. Mrs Merkel has now called for a political union and far-reaching steps towards integration, and has not excluded a new European Convention. With Germany so clearly at the helm of the European Union’s response to the crisis, the implications of such a shift for Europe as a whole are clearly huge.
Der Beitrag im Volltext unter folgendem Link: