The Beginning of the End
By Steven J. Grisafi, PhD.
On Tuesday, January 22, 2019, President Macron of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany renewed the Franco-German cooperation implicit in the Elysee Treaty signed 56 years previously and simultaneously made explicit their intentions for the future of the European Union. The Brexit Crisis has caused much short term memory loss for many Europeans, and some Americans, if indeed it can assumed that the Americans have been paying attention to the affairs conducted within the European Union. President Junker has made known his insistence that the eight member nations of the European Union, who have not yet adopted the use of the Euro dollar, must do so in few years time. Despite the urging of Chancellor-candidate, and former European Parliamentary leader, Martin Shultz, that the European Union ought move forward toward complete integration, however that may be defined, using only a coalition of willing member nations, most European leaders, such as former Bundesfinanzminister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have rejected the notion of a “two-speed” European Union. A major concern of the smaller nations within the European Union, and especially among Eastern European nations, both large and small, is that there ought not be two classes of membership within the Union. Hence, if there is to be full integration of all member nations within the European Union they must all adopt the Euro dollar, and no member nation is to enjoy any special privileges that is not shared with the others.
The unfortunate rejection by the French Ambassador to the United Nations for the laudable proposal of Vice Chancellor Olaf Sholz, that France agree to transform its permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council into a European Union membership, and the equally unfortunate embrace by Bundesausminister Heiko Maas of the French proposal to support a permanent membership for Germany on the Security Council, has been cast metaphorically within stone by the Treaty of Aachen. Setting themselves apart as two world-class privileged members of the European Union, both France and Germany made apparent their contempt for all other member nations within the European Union and their determination to dominate the whole of the Union through their partnership. While judgment may not yet have fled to brutish beasts it has forsaken the minds of German leadership who blithely ignore that French support for permanent Security Council membership guarantees nothing. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation could upset German aspirations, if neither the British nor the Americans choose not to do so. Germany has gambled on the clout of the French. Rather than seek partnership with more traditional allies of the Federal Republic, Germany pretends that all they need is cooperation in Paris. Berlin may now have this but it loses cooperation elsewhere.