Can Germany now hold the European team together? Timothy Garton Ash
about 5 years in The guardian
Angela Merkel’s triumph in brokering an EU Covid-19 recovery package could mark the resurgence of a shared political dream
The other day, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was sitting on a beach in the summer of 2030 and looking back on how Germany had saved Europe.
The German chancellor had brokered a European recovery package after the Covid-19 crisis of 2020, with large grants and loans to help hard-hit south European economies, drawing on shared European borrowing. It had maintained constructive relations between the EU and post-Brexit Britain, helped the citizens of Poland and Hungary to defend liberal democracy, confounded Vladimir Putin by seriously committing to a common European energy policy, used the regulatory power of the EU to curb Facebook, shaped a common strategy towards China and made a world-leading example of Europe’s green new deal. Continue reading...