In the thirty or so years that I have been following EU affairs ”“ or is it nearer 35 years now since I studied in French literature in Paris, and German philosophy in Mainz ”“ I have never seen ties between Europe’s two great land states reduced so low.
The French Socialist Party crossed a line by lashing out at Chancellor Angela Merkel in person. It is one thing to protest “German austerity”, it is quite another to rebuke the “selfish intransigence of Mrs Merkel, who thinks of nothing but the deposits of German savers, the trade balance recorded by Berlin and her electoral future”.
There is no justification for such an ad hominem attack. German policy is indeed destructive, but that is structural. It is built into the mechanisms of EMU and the anthropological make-up of the enterprise.
Didn’t they try to bail out France in 1914 and 1940?