A new German Question? Germany and European Integration in Historical perspective

This chapter presents a portrait of a semi-hegemonic power in Europe, beset by policy dilemmas in how to manage existentially threatening crises within the euro-area. In stressing German vulnerability, it underlines the historical lesson about the transience of creditor-state power. The chapter examines German attitudes to euro-area crisis management in an historical perspective. German euro-area crisis management is historically distinctive because it takes place within the framework of European monetary union. In German euro-area crisis management the SPD and the Green's leadership, which had never been as closely identified with ordoliberalism as the CDU/CSU and the FDP, aligned itself closely with the argument. The evolution of cross-national networks to exploit German negotiating capital became a key tool for maximizing German influence in euro-area crisis management and in euro-area institutional and policy reforms. The most vivid evidence of increasing German isolation was the relative decline of the informal creditor-state club at the heart of euro-area crisis management.