WHEN it came, it was everything and nothing at the same time. For over half a year Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, waited for a German response to the grand ideas for Europe’s future he had laid out at the Sorbonne last September. Governments rose and fell while Mr Macron drummed his fingers; the transatlantic bond stretched, and came close to snapping. When Angela Merkel finally gave her answer, on June 3rd, it came not in a big speech or a government statement, but in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS), a conservative broadsheet. How very like the German chancellor.
The responses to Mrs Merkel’s interview were like descriptions of the same object viewed through opposite ends of a telescope. For those sympathetic to French ambitions, the chancellor’s offers were weak, offering only baby steps towards the strengthened euro zone Mr Macron urges, constrained by the same old German red lines about rules and risk. Others were excited by...Continue reading
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