Germans bite the bullet

Date: 07/03/1996

WITH just three weeks to go before the launch of the Intergovernmental Conference on EU reform, few Germans know, or indeed even care, about the impending negotiations on revamping and strengthening the institutional architecture of Europe.

Yet the days when citizens of the continent's most populous state felt it was safe to leave the business of Europe in the hands of their elected leaders are over.

Arguably, the shift from an attitude of benevolent indifference towards, or lukewarm support for, the political establishment's passion for Europe was ushered in by a single headline in December 1991: “Unser schönes Geld: Die Mark wird abgeschafft” (“Our beautiful money: the mark will be scrapped”), the Bild Zeitung, Europe's biggest-selling tabloid, splashed across its front page.

It was clear from the outset what line the highly-influential newspaper would pursue towards the government's most ambitious political and economic project: “Nix Ecu,” the paper stated. “We want to keep our mark.”

For the majority of Germans, used to mentally switching channels whenever the news broadcasts came up with another soporific European story, the Bild Zeitung's headline came as a ghastly shock.

Here was their conservative government wantonly jeopardising the bedrock of prosperity, the wonderfully hard currency that gives every German abroad the feeling of belonging to a superior class of traveller.

The feeling of dismay was particularly strong in east Germany, where, only two years earlier, millions had marched for reunification, waving banners calling in equally forcefully terms for both democracy and the deutschemark.

Since that fateful day in 1991, most Germans have been watching the EU's machinations with a close eye. And from most people's point of view, the headlines coming out of Brussels have been consistently negative.

While the plan to replace the deutschemark with the Euro has seemed to gather almost unstoppable momentum, European governments have come up with plenty of new decisions which make ordinary Germans unhappy.

The next serious blow was the inclusion of bananas in the price-pushing Common Agricultural Policy regime of high subsidies and import levies.

That step, which the completion of the single market made logical and practically inevitable, virtually doubled the street price of bananas by ending the special duty-free import regime secured for Germany by the then Chancellor Konrad Adenauer during negotiations on the Treaty of Rome.

To appreciate the depth of anger the banana decision unleashed, one has to understand that, for the average practical-minded German, the banana is perfection made fruit.

Non-dribbling, ecologically pre-packaged, easy to eat and nourishing, bananas serve as the ideal complement to the sturdy sandwich on which many German factory and office workers munch at lunchtime. The bleary-eyed mother who stumbles into her kitchen at dawn to put her children's and husband's lunch packs together loves them, as they come cheap and involve a minimum of fuss.

Indeed, in the days of Communism in East Germany, the high cost, paucity and stunted growth of the few politically-correct Nicaraguan bananas that the regime could afford to import served as one of the many focuses of the population's resentment against their tottering leadership.

Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of East Germans raided the shelves of western supermarkets for the coveted fruit, prompting sarcastic remarks from blasé western consumers and providing satirical writers, comedians and caricaturists with a few easy laughs.

Yet this was the fruit the price of which EU governments decided to increase in order to safeguard the livelihood of the inhabitants of former French and British colonies - a burden which most Germans feel should be borne by the former colonial powers alone.

Worse was to come. While the decision to move towards economic and monetary union targeted a national symbol and the banana problem hit people in their pockets, the debate about how to deal with the outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK seemed to reveal a Union ready to take unacceptable risks with people's health.

One of the most characteristic traits of Germany's post-war national psyche is a degree of safety and health consciousness paralleled only in Switzerland and, perhaps, some Scandinavian countries.

For the majority of Germans, a government, or indeed a business, which does not put safety and health considerations above all others is failing in its single most important obligation.

Thus Germans were outraged when the European Commission, acting on the advice of its veterinary committee, refused to accept the banning of imports of British beef following the outbreak of BSE in the UK. From their point of view, the scientists' reluctance to positively exclude a possible transmission of BSE to humans was enough to justify a blanket export ban, even if the same scientists asserted that no evidence pointed - so far - to a health hazard to humans.

The controversy between the German Länder, many of which decided upon an unenforceable, transparently populist regional import ban, and the Commission, which has threatened to take Germany to court over the issue, is still raging on.

On a loftier level, many Germans were angered by the EU's failure to act cohesively and forcefully to stop the bloodshed in former Yugoslavia.

While overwhelmingly opposed to sending a German combat force - which, admittedly, would have drawn most of the Serb fire - most Germans felt strongly that something should be done to stop the fighting in Bosnia, and partly ascribed the lack of action to the perceived weakness of the Union.

Against this background, it is perhaps surprising that the anger about individual EU decisions and the deep wariness about monetary union have so far failed to translate into massive opposition to the whole process of European integration.

To a large extent, this can be attributed to the consensual thinking of the political establishment on European matters. While some senior Social Democrat leaders have been trying to boost their party's lacklustre performance with off-the-cuff, EMU-sceptical comments, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) as a whole remains as firm a supporter of European integration as Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Their rapprochement with the political establishment also means that even the Greens have dropped their long-standing opposition to the EU. Their leader, Joschka Fischer, in fact largely shares Kohl's analysis of EU integration as the best way to protect Germany against some of its old demons and the ill-will of its neighbours.

Yet, notwithstanding the deep-seated opposition to monetary union and the ongoing grumbling about Germany's large contribution to EU coffers, most Germans would (if they knew about it) wholeheartedly back their government's wish list for the impending IGC.

When asked in opinion polls, Germans strongly support the strengthening of the EU's decision-making mechanisms and the creation of a truly common foreign and defence policy. The sharing of state sovereignty between a regional, national and European government is no alien concept in a political culture which clung to a feudal model of split sovereignty throughout the millennium of the Holy Roman Empire.

To a people whom two lost world wars have left distrustful of blind nationalism and its potentially rapid translation into military action, the idea of pooling military and foreign policy resources at the European level makes a lot of sense.

It is also the best guarantee that war between Germany and its neighbours becomes virtually impossible. The chancellor, for one, is deeply convinced that the deep fear of renewed security threats, should European integration fail, will ensure that a majority of voters will follow him, even down the thorny path of monetary union.

Only the youngest Germans have grown up with parents for whom the sufferings which modern war inflicts on civilian populations are not a personal and frequently retold memory. Germany's responsibility for World War II, and the mass murder of Jews and other minorities, have sometimes obscured the fact that millions of German families have been emotionally and economically devastated during this century, sometimes twice within a period of 30 years.

The preservation of an everlasting peace in Europe is thus a real concern. Perhaps more than other European peoples, most Germans, when push comes to shove, are ready to put their grievances aside and bite the bullet of European integration.