He was the super-stubborn person par excellence, the genuine inspirer of the troika, the dreaded men in black who, following the economic and financial crisis of 2008, were sent by the European Union to rein in the finances of the bailed out countries (Portugal, Greece, Ireland ) at the cost of imposing terrible sacrifices on the population and slowing down their economies in a lasting way. Greece, in particular, will never forget his name: Wolfgang Schäuble. The then powerful German Finance Minister applied a violent austerity cure to Europe from which it took years to recover. In Greece, more than anywhere else. And, if it hadn’t been for France’s rejection – and the unconditional surrender of the Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, who swallowed everything – Athens would have been expelled from the euro.
An orthodox liberal with uncompromising Protestant morals, Schäuble was the father of the dogma of the zero deficit (Schwarze null, or black zero) and of the constitutional limitation on public borrowing in Germany, which has slowed down investments so much – the infrastructures are that fall – and the growth of this country’s economy. In German, not because yes, debt and guilt have the same word: schuld.
Wolfgang Schäuble died on December 26 – the feast of Saint Stephen, patron saint of carpenters (his grandfather’s trade) – the same day that one of the great totems of Europe, the Frenchman Jacques Delors, architect of the EU, disappeared that we know today, of which he laid the foundations as president of the European Commission between 1985 and 1995. You could think that they were two opposing personalities. And yet they had a lot in common. Behind the man in black, Schäuble also hid a fervent Europeanist.
Born in 1942 in Freiburg im Breisgau, on the banks of the Rhine – and therefore of France -, Schäuble was bilingual and always expressed a strong attachment to Franco-German friendship, the hard core of the Europe he dreamed of. . As for the future of the EU, he always went much further than his party, the CDU Christian Democrats, let alone its chancellor, Angela Merkel. In the mid-1990s, Schäuble was already advocating – as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, would do years later – to promote a hard core, around Germany and France, to deepen European integration and a true “political union” would arrive. A requirement that after the covid pandemic of 2020 he considered non-extendable.
The German politician defended reforming the treaties so that the European Parliament would have the capacity for legislative initiative – which it currently lacks – and for the Commission to become a true European Government, leaving the Council – made up of the prime ministers and heads of state of the member countries – as a second Chamber, a kind of Senate. Schäuble went so far as to make very bold proposals, such as that Europeans could directly vote for the EU president… something that, just thinking about it, must have made European leaders (happily accommodated in a intergovernmental dynamic that guarantees them ultimate control). It doesn’t take much imagination to sense the revolution that changes of such a caliber would entail. Schäuble’s legacy was not limited to austerity.
Architect of the reunification of Germany – he was in charge of the negotiation with the East -, fleeting president of the CDU – sacrificed by the party’s irregular funding scandal -, Wolfgang Schäuble could have been Chancellor of Germany. He was the favorite, the premonition, to succeed Helmut Kohl, who was finally replaced by a then unknown leader from the defunct GDR, Angela Merkel, whose Europeanism would be built pragmatically in the face of crisis. Who knows how far Europe could have gone with Schäuble. His vision and ambition, if anything, are today more imperative than ever.
Europe is facing a crucial moment. Embarking on a long and complex enlargement process, which may lead it to end up grouping 30 and even 36 countries, the current EU is an economic and demographic power, but it is a secondary actor from a geopolitical and strategic point of view . And, if nothing changes, it risks ending up in absolute insignificance. It is not only a matter of reforming its governance, which is otherwise essential – it is imperative to eliminate the principle of unanimity, which restricts decisions in matters of foreign policy, and to strengthen the role of Parliament –, but to make a qualitative leap in political and economic union. The response to the covid crisis and the war in Ukraine overflowed the narrow margins initially marked in Brussels – which went from regulating to acting as an executive arm – and showed the way forward. The former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi, to whom the Italian press attributes European ambitions, has put it bluntly: “Europe must become a State”.
A priori, the clocks seem to mark the same time today in Berlin and Paris. The coalition agreement that brought the social democrat Olaf Scholz to the Chancellery just over two years ago explicitly opted for a “European federal state” and the speech that the chancellor gave in August 2022 at the University of Prague was to approach – five years later – many of the postulates defended by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, in his historic speech in September 2017 at the Sorbonne, with which he became the leader of Europeanists on the continent. However, this tune doesn’t come at the best time. Both Scholz and Macron, at the head of unstable governments, face serious domestic political problems, which provides a weak basis for their respective adventures.
Beyond Germany and France, Europe as a whole faces a crucial date at the polls in June: the predictable rise of far-right forces – sovereigntists and Eurosceptics – in the elections to the European Parliament could overturn the current majorities and send a polar cold over this uncertain spring.
