In the beginning there was the fall of the Berlin Wall. It slammed the German question back on to the international agenda. The prospect of a reunified Germany filled many neighbours, including France, with concern. President François Mitterrand saw one way to prevent German hegemony over Europe: the D-Mark, that hallmark of German strength, had to be absorbed into a single European currency. In early 1990, it soon became obvious that France’s approval of the reunification of Germany would depend on this being fulfilled.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel adjusts her course on the eurozone’s debt crisis, she knows that years of hard-won achievement hang in the balance. Currency union has been the ambition of many a postwar west European politician, including Helmut Kohl, who wanted monetary union, but with political integration. In the spring of 1990 he gave in to Mr Mitterrand, to prevent tainting German unification with Franco-German discord and agreed to a separation of the issues. The result was the 1993 Maastricht treaty. Monetary union became a reality, but not the fiscal union which was at the heart of Germany’s vision for political union. The result fell far short of the German vision.
The debt crisis has triggered a learning process. The realisation is growing that the euro will only survive if it is covered by a joint fiscal policy and to some extent by a joint social policy. Transfer payments to debt-ridden states will only be accepted by the public in the donor countries if the recipients commit to strict budgetary discipline and do all possible to turn monetary union into a “stability union”.