BRUSSELS, Oct 24: In Brussels, Germans have shrugged off their postwar reserve and make no apology for shaping Europe’s future, taking key posts in EU institutions and pushing Berlin’s trade interests with vigour.
As Angela Merkel forms a new coalition government after a third successive election triumph, the conservative chancellor can build on efforts, in place since her first term in 2005, that have increased not just the number of Germans in senior jobs in Brussels but the extent to which they answer to Berlin.
And where that fails to ensure EU policy acceptable to the bloc’s biggest economy, Merkel has shown she is prepared to lay down the law in person – as when she demanded an EU retreat this summer from a looming trade war with China that would have hurt the exports of Germany’s big car makers and engineering firms.
Its 27 partners can hardly deny that a state which is home to one EU citizen in six and produces a fifth of the bloc’s output must have a big say. Berlin’s new assertiveness, aided by a widening economic gap it has opened up over struggling allies, is, however, provoking grumbles – though there is little sign yet of a serious challenge to weaken Merkel’s grip in Brussels.
For Germans like Herbert Reul, who leads the chancellor’s Christian Democrats in the European Parliament, that influence is a natural development of history for a nation that long put its wealth at the service of a French-accented EU in return for the political rehabilitation which that brought after Hitler.
‘We’re done with that,’ Reul said of the days of German reserve in Brussels, which endured through the long leadership of Helmut Kohl that saw the forging in the 1990s of the euro and of a bigger Germany that absorbed the formerly communist east.
‘A state that wasn’t a state, always a bit under the authority of the Allies, … Is very cautious,’ Reul added. ‘To take responsibility means that you shouldn’t just be sitting in the corner and apologising – that’s not enough.’
Taking responsibility has meant, among other things, taking some of the most powerful, if not always the most visible, jobs in Brussels. The likes of Uwe Corsepius, Johannes Laitenberger and Klaus Welle are hardly household names. But alongside a few dozen other senior Germans, they hold great sway over EU policy.
Once Merkel’s Europe adviser, Corsepius, 53, is secretary-general of the European Council. Some of his 3,000 staff see him as the man who cut their access to Facebook and travel websites to make them work harder. But his real power is to steer the agendas and legal advice that shape meetings of EU governments.
Laitenberger, 49, is chief-of-staff to Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, which oversees trade and other EU polices. And Welle, also 49, secretary-general of the elected European Parliament, is known by some as the ‘prince of darkness’ for the influence he wields over the legislature.
Welle also seeks closer coordination among Germans in the EU capital, in part through the Genval Circle – a discreet forum for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Brussels.
‘ONE VOICE’
‘Germans are behaving more normally in relation to Brussels,’ said Hans-Gert Poettering, who was European Parliament speaker until 2009. He now chairs the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think-tank associated with the CDU and in whose elegant Brussels townhouse office the Genval Circle often meets.
‘This does not mean that this wartime chapter in our history is closed,’ Poettering said in defence of Berlin’s new approach. ‘But history should not restrict our freedom to act.’
Coordination among Germans in Brussels and between them and Berlin is no accident. Kohl used to complain that fellow Germans tended to abandon their national identity once over the border.
Now, said CDU lawmaker Reul: ‘If we speak with one voice, then we have power.’ He himself meets fellow Christian Democrat leaders in Berlin, including Merkel herself, every other Monday.
‘The German group seeks to represent industrial political interests. We have a lot of industry to defend,’ said Reul, who represents a manufacturing region on the lower Rhine.
Simon Hix, professor of European politics at the London School of Economics, said: ‘You feel the shadow of the Berlin government in the parliament … It’s rare that anything happens … That’s against the interests of German industry.’
It was under Merkel’s centre-left SPD predecessor Gerhard Schroeder that a new generation of German leaders, too young to remember Nazism, began a push for a stronger voice in Brussels.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, SPD foreign minister in Merkel’s first coalition, set up a programme to train Germans to win EU posts. The probable new left-right coalition in Berlin may further consolidate a united German approach in EU affairs.
‘The further improvement of Germany’s personnel presence in European institutions is very important for the government,’ a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. ‘The aim is that Germany, as the biggest EU member state, is represented in an appropriate way at all levels of EU institutions.’
(AGENCIES)
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