After 11 years managing European crises, veteran summiteer Chancellor Angela Merkel will feel a stab of deja vu when she lands in Brussels on Tuesday afternoon for the post-Brexit postmortem.
Unlike other EU leaders, she has been here before.
A decade ago, French and Dutch voters didn’t ask to leave the bloc but they killed off plans to give Europe a constitution. One crisis-wracked decade later, enveloped in Brexit bleakness, it’s easy to forget the existential gloom back then. But Merkel hasn’t forgotten.
She turned things around then with her first pan-European deployment of what we now call the Merkel method.
Step one: allow everyone to vent a bit, but not too long.
Step two: break down a seemingly hopeless, complex task into a set of manageable, sequential steps.
Step three: leave the civil servants to tackle reform technicalities and get politicians working on matters of style, to lift the mood.
‘Berlin Declaration’
In March 2007, in the middle of Germany’s EU presidency, Merkel invited downbeat EU leaders to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the bloc’s foundation, by signing a “Berlin Declaration”.
The declaration had no legal weight but it had an aspirational quality. It broke the vicious circle of depression and paralysis and got things moving again in Europe with its core idea that the Continent’s citizens “have united, to our good fortune”.
Almost a decade on, Europe is divided, like never before, to its misfortune. A major EU member wants out, the path ahead is obscure, and Europe’s political mainstream is squeezed between left-wing austerity opponents and referendum-loving right-wing populists. Merkel knows that Berlin Declaration-style pathos won’t be enough this time around.
Although concerns about German dominance in the EU are greater now than ever before, Merkel’s priority in Brussels is now the same as then: to move the bloc from sniping to analysis and reform.
This is no time for malice. While other EU figures told Britain not to let the door hit them on the way out, Merkel has expressed understanding that Britain needs time to reorder its affairs.
Voters – and financial markets – are watching, and the clock is ticking. Thus Merkel’s message on Monday: until London hits the Article 50 exit button, starting separation talks, we’re not interested in discussing the future of UK-EU relations – not even informally.
Megaphone diplomacy
Despite that blast of megaphone diplomacy, Berlin officials will insist in Brussels that it is in no one’s interest to weaken Britain in the coming months more than it has already weakened itself.
At the same time they want to make clear in talks – with Britain and other EU members – that it does make a difference if you are in or out of the bloc. And Merkel’s officials warn that, until its final day in the EU, Britain is a full member of the bloc, with the same privileges and obligations as everyone else.
After five decades driving forward – followed by another decade stalled in crisis – the European car has discovered that it has a reverse gear. Expect no sudden moves from the woman at the wheel.