THE GOOD GERMAN:

The Merkel factor: Never mind the summit: wait for September’s victory on the German plains (Times of London, 6/17/05)

Angela Merkel, the leader of the German Christian Democrats, has become a useful ally of the British Government, even though her likely election as Chancellor is still some months away. By recognising that budget reform is necessary, and by conceding that she understands Britain’s concerns over the rebate, she has already shown more leadership than most of the prime ministers gathered around the table in Brussels last night. For too many of those leaders, the budget wrangle has been an excuse not to focus on broader economic and political issues, including the resounding defeat of the EU constitution in France and the Netherlands.

At a moment when they should be responding to the discontents and anxieties that those votes exposed — about political arrogance, remote institutions, stagnating economies and faltering social models — Europe’s leaders have taken refuge in old disputes about farm payments, the British rebate, or how much regional aid prosperous Spain is to continue to claw out of Brussels even though the needs of the Union’s new members are manifestly greater. It is for all the world as though nothing seismic had occurred.

The institutional EU has its own version of Cartesian logic: “I spend, therefore I exist.” President Chirac’s interests lie in demonstrating France’s power to resist any radical transformation of the EU’s spending priorities. Germany’s do not; and yet Gerhard Schröder seems to think the best final service he can do Europe as Chancellor is to pretend that Franco-German interests are indivisible and their influence is still paramount.