What do five continental powers feel about the possibility of Brexit?
David Cameron’s plan for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union leaves the UK’s EU status more precarious that at any point for 40 years.
But what do continental powers feel about the possibility of Brexit – a British EU exit? Five prominent writers from leading European newspapers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland reflect the view from their country.
Germany
The German government is by now well used to the fact that the big questions of Europe will, sooner or later, end up in Angela Merkel’s in-tray.
Euro crisis, Grexit, Russia-Ukraine … Germany attracts these problems like a magnet. That’s what you get when you’re the first among equals. Not that the German authorities are always happy about it.
So it is that even on the subject of the British referendum, all eyes are once again turning to Germany. Britain and the other EU members are waiting for a signal: how ready is Berlin to meet David Cameron halfway?
In these crunch moments, Merkel likes to do what she does best: she waits it out. It’s not as if the Brexit alarm came out of the blue after Cameron’s re-election. Over the past two years, no meeting between Merkel and the British prime minister went by without the pair discussing EU reform – and German resistance to it.
Merkel wants to keep Britain in the EU. She has made no secret of this. She belongs to the German group of politicians that tend towards anglophilia, not francophilia. She respects the British political system, admires the system of parliamentary debate and values the calmness with which the democratic system has always operated. Anyone wanting to understand her sympathy for Britain need only read the speech she made in February last year to both houses of parliament in which she outlined all the reasons why Britain really belongs in the EU.
