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>Where this narrative of German driving the EU comes from? Historical experience, including recent historical experience. Naively, most discussions of EU power balances resolve in the nominal voting system, and the vote count allotted to each country. Germany uses its economic and political might to push around smaller nation states, secure satellite votes, and do as it pleases within the EU, far more than its allotted voting power (besides a lot of the serious decisions are taken in backroom deals, and informal bodies like the "Eurogroup", through raw power, bypassing voting altogether). Here's a good take: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/germany-... Even this Spiegel article simultaneously downplays and confirms that Germany runs Europe: "When Angela Merkel travels to Brussels, she does so as the leader of by far the strongest economy in the euro zone. Policies she doesn't agree with don't get passed. Power as such isn't a bad thing when those that have it use it wisely. But do they? There is a new tone in Germany. It is one that no longer abides by the noble customs of diplomacy. Whispering, suggesting and hinting have been replaced by ranting and blustering. (...) The economically powerful Germany got its way. In order to put the struggling countries on the right track -- on the German track, that is -- Merkel brought in the International Monetary Fund so as to free Germany from having to play the strict overseer. Still, it has not escaped notice that Berlin is in charge. (...) German sociologist Ulrich Beck, who has since passed away, referred to the pressure being exerted on Europe from Berlin as "Merkiavellismus." [2] As a matter of fact, one of the stated goals of the bureaucrats that created EEC was (and remains) to contain Germany. "The German question produced the Europe of today, as well as the
transatlantic relationship of the past seven-plus decades. Germany’s
unification in 1871 created a new nation in the heart of Europe that was
too large, too populous, too rich, and too powerful to be effectively
balanced by the other European powers, including the United Kingdom. The
breakdown of the European balance of power helped produce two world wars
and brought more than ten million U.S. soldiers across the Atlantic to
fight and die in those wars. Americans and Europeans established NATO
after World War II at least as much to settle the German problem as to
meet the Soviet challenge, a fact now forgotten by today’s realists—to
“keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,” as
Lord Ismay, the alliance’s first secretary-general, put it. This was also
the purpose of the series of integrative European institutions, beginning
with the European Steel and Coal Community, that eventually became the
European Union. As the diplomat George Kennan put it, some form of
European unification was “the only conceivable solution for the problem of
Germany’s relation to the rest of Europe,”
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-power-in... |