A German Europe is a contradiction in terms. If NATO was said to be about holding the US in, the Soviet Union out and Germany down, Europe cannot flourish without everybody enjoying a part of the limelight. Having said that, there is clearly strong expectation of German leadership in this testing time. There is little effort to help the process. Germany benefits from politics elsewhere being lousy. Electorates are asking for performance-driven legitimacy. They want someone to get them out of the mess and they know it is not going to be their national politicians.

Germany has a problem with this because it is used to what Barack Obama has recently floated as "leading from the backseat". You can see the phenomenon being expressed through lots of channels, including in the German preference not to take up the top positions in Brussels but rather ones where you can exercise more indirect if still vital influence.

A European Germany

One should be careful bashing Germany for losing the European commitment. The recent Transatlantic Trends report showed that only the Germans, and not other Europeans, want the EU to have more authority over the member states’ economic and budgetary policies (54 percent in favour, 44 percent against). You can say that this is on the assumption that it will be a euro-zone remodelled after the German blueprint but the point remains that the Germans seem to be more ready than we often assume to hand over the power over their own budgetary matters to Brussels.

We see Germany as omnipowerful in the euro-zone crisis, the only actor capable of pulling the strings, but Germany herself is in a more fragile position than we tend to believe. The real countdown to the solution to the euro-zone crisis started in August with the publication of the German GDP growth data for Q2 when it suddenly turned out that the country’s miraculous ricovery has its limits. The new order index data from China showed that domestic demand substituted for the subdued foreign orders for Chinese goods abroad which means it will be tougher for foreign firms to compete on the Chinese market. In turbulent times, we should remember that a loss of confidence in Germany would mean the collapse of the last bastion of financial credibility that Europe has left.

Germany’s global dream

In the first phase of the euro-zone crisis, Germany had assumed it is an island of prosperity which can afford to distance itself from the troubled countries. The paradigm of global Germany seemed to have a lot of traction as Chinas of this world dreamed of driving in BMW’s long-version limousines. But then Germany learned, as many times in the past, that it is in the wrong place on the map - too big for Europe and too small for the world.

Precious time was lost, especially in 2010 with protracted decision-making, always being one step behind the markets. Germany is now slowly realising it is swimming in the same boat with the others, for better or for worse. The euro-zone remains by far the largest market for Germany with 11.55 percent of the country’s exports ending up in the southern tier of the eurozone, compared to just 5.5 percent going to China.

If things are to change, Germany will need to feel the remorse herself for sleeping through the formative years of the currency union. The Dutch considered the original sin - dismissing the Stability and Growth Pact by Schroeder and Chirac - to have been an act of treason by Germany. Many people believe this is what cost the Dutch government a no in the constitutional treaty referendum, not enlargement to Central Europe.

Day trip to Westphalia

There is life beyond the euro-zone crisis although the infection can surely by now threaten the very foundations of the EU as such. In other policy fields, Germany has certainly begun to look much more attentively after its national interest. It is not necessarily wrong but it is certainly different and Germany has not handled the transition very well, having been rough on the edges with its partners.

It may well be that Germany had to go through its "back to Westphalia" moment to rediscover Europe. The Constitutional Court seems to be edging that way, having drawn the red lines of European integration first and now becoming much more "European" in its latest verdict. Germany’s unilateral moment has been crowned by the decision to close nuclear power plants with huge ramifications for the European market and neighbours. Most EU energy policy discussions at the moment are about the consequences of the German decision.

Europe moving East

Germany’s EU policy has much to do with the change in the centre of gravity in Europe. The country’s span of attention has clearly moved East following the EU enlargement which was primarily a German-led project. No-one else threw as much political weight behind the process as Germany. This is not to say that the process was smooth from the beginning. Poland and Germany fell out with each other on numerous occasions after 2004, especially when Chancellor Schroeder spent his leisure time with President Putin in his Russian sauna and then signed a deal to build a gas pipeline skipping Poland.

From that perspective, the fact that there is now a close embrace between Poland and Germany is a miracle, one of the more cheerful outcomes in European politics in the last years. Economically, Poland is happy being in bed with Germany who is the transition belt for our encounter with globalisation. What is more, Germany has focused more on its own interest but on many issues, like Schengen, it has taken a decently pro-European position.

Germany is also well-positioned to lead a repositioning of the EU’s global presence through its G20 role and its lack of a permanent seat at the UN. It would have to review its security policy along the way and complete the reform of the Bundeswher. However, Germany’s world-view with the focus on stability in the neighbourhood and global outreach is not a bad recipe for Europe at large.

Bridging vision and legitimacy

The more basic challenge has to do with what President George Bush called the vision thing and with legitimacy. The sense of togetherness in Europe today is more a function of the old momentum. Europe is a satellite that was launched into the space and is circling the earth without a clear sense of purpose. Germany is not helping it but nobody else is either. The European process is now entirely based on crisis-driven legitimacy. Politicians say they will not to do something but when pressed against the wall they concede the ground and claim they have to do it because otherwise the whole project can fall into the abyss. This works from day-to-day but cannot work in the longer term.

The Central European writer Robert Musil wrote in the interwar years an avangarde book "Man without qualities" about someone who cannot define his identity because what used to be part of it had ceized to be important. The same is true of Germany and equally well it is true of the rest of Europe. What is the light in the tunnel? The only way out is to avoid putting things under the carpet and start thinking about the end-result. Germany has a unique chance to make sure it is no longer seen as a source of permanent angst or a saviour of last resort in the Europe of the future.

*Paweł Świeboda is President of demosEUROPA - Centre for European Strategy

For further information: DemosEuropa