Has Germany Been Europeanised or Has Europe Become (too) Germanic?

It has often been argued that European monetary unification must basically be seen as a device to Europeanise re-unified Germany. For the Germans it seemed to be the best possible way to prevent a German “Sonderweg” and end any German ambition for hegemony. For the rest of Europe, and particularly France, it seemed to be the best way to curb German monetary dominance and to secure a French imprint on EU policy-making. In this article, however, it is argued that the German impact on the economic governance regime of EMU and its fencing off the French proposal of a “gouvernement economique” is so substantial that the term “Germanic Europe” seems in fact to be appropriate. More importantly, the economic governance system of “Germanic Europe” has locked the European Union into a politics of disinflation which makes it difficult for the EU to prosper and reap the potential fruits of European integration.

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* This paper was written while the author was a guest researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), Brussels, from March to April 2005. He is most grateful to Andrew Watt for his help and the ETUI for its support.