Maastricht -25 Years Ago

The meeting of the European Council in Maastricht on December 9 and 10, 1991, not only prepared the path for creating the European Union but also decided positively about the introduction of a common currency, as the communique tells:

“The chief result of the summit was the agreement between the Heads of State or Government on the draft Treaty on European Union. Economic and monetary unioN in particular, is now well and truly launched in a gradual but irreversible process, spurred on by the prospect of a single currency by 1 January 1999 and the establishment of a procedure for transition to Stage III by
1 July 1999. A qualitative step forward was taken in the field of political union with the inclusion of provisions for a common foreign and security policy in the Treaty on European Union; this covers all aspects of foreign and security policy and establishes cooperation between the Member States as standard practice”.

Germany Chancelleor Helmut Kohl at the time was full of praise, as his speech in the German Bundestag on December 13, 1991, shows:

“Firstly, there is no going back on the road to European Union. As they face the future, the Member States of the European Community are now bound together in such a way that neither disintegration nor regression into the old nation-state mindset, with all its negative consequences, can be an option.

This means that we have realised a core aim of Germany’s European policy. Maastricht proves that the united Germany is actively taking responsibility in and for Europe and that it stands by what it has always said: that German unity and European unity are two sides of the same coin.”

He could have been not more wrong. Disintegration and regression have become daily bread for the EU and its members states, for a variety of reasons. In ‘The Euro and the Battle of Ideas” Brunnermeier, James and Landau make the case that the Euro was from the very start overshadowed by diverging economic philosophies of France and Germany, or ‘the South’ and ‘the North’. Indeed,the pre-launch of the Euro came with a intensive debate between representatives of the ’crowning camp’ and the ‘monetarist camp’, i.e. the question whether one can have a common currency without a common polity. I always felt that the controversy is leading nowhere, and reading Brunnermeier & Co did not change very much my former take. Still, they are right to hint to the relevance of the controversy when it comes to the responses to national Eurozone crises after 2010. Obviously, the different economic policy views did not hinder a successful ten year-period for the Euro, something that needs to get addressed when the ‘battle interpretation’ should make sense.

What became a problem post-2010 is the second part of Kohl’s statement, namely that a ‘united Germany is actively taking responsibility in and for Europe’. What we courier see since 2010 is that German Chancellor Merkel not only did procrastinate when the Greek problems became manifest but that her coalition government – thanks to a politically deformed Social Democratic Party – was orienting its Euro-policy on narrow electoral interests. This decision set the tine that then was turned into a project of a ‘Black Zero’ which was eventually imposed on the European Council – with active support of governments of ‘the North’. Maastricht stands for a visionary Europe and also for a Germany for which Europe was a political as well as a cultural anchor. Things changed since, didn’t they?