Germany has more pressing concerns than Brexit
There is a world of rogue powers with an animus against the EU to deal with first
BJ's ego prevents him seeing how low down on Merkel's priority list he is:
https://www.ft.com/content/e9b7b193-47d4-4887-abe1-2c12f344922a
Chatting to a diplomat in Berlin last week, I suggested that Brexit probably ranked about number four on the list of German foreign-policy concerns.
He looked thoughtful and then replied: “I think lower than that.”
So we went through the list.
Alarming dossiers are piling up on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s desk.
The most urgent issues facing the German chancellor are Russia, Covid-19, the eastern Mediterranean, the US election and China.
Then comes Brexit.
As the current president of the EU, Germany sees its role as shaping a unified European response to all these issues.
....
Beyond the boundaries of Europe, Germany sees a world of rogue superpowers with an animus against the European project.
As one senior official puts it: “One thing that Moscow, Beijing and Washington have in common is that they would all like to divide Europe.”
...
As they try to respond to an increasingly threatening world, German leaders have come back again and again to the importance of maintaining European unity.
In a world of rogue superpowers and global environmental and health challenges, they believe European nations can only hope to defend their interests by sticking together.
Protecting the European single market is a matter of security - as well as economics.
^
It is that global context that conditions the German response to Brexit.^
Viewed from Berlin, it would be dangerous and self-defeating to agree a Brexit deal that undermines the single market.
As the Germans see it, allowing the UK tariff and quota-free access to that market
-
while exempting the country from the EU’s state-aid regulations and border controls -
would pose an unacceptable threat to Europe’s legal order, prosperity and unity.
There is also the question of trust.
If Boris Johnson’s UK government rips up a deal agreed nine months ago, what is the point of negotiating any further with them?^
This message is generally delivered calmly and without rancour.^
^In Berlin, the harshest word I heard applied to the British government’s announcement that it intends to break international law was “troubling”.
Listening to that remark, it struck me that if you want to hear British-style understatement these days, you need to go to Germany.^
The political atmosphere in London is hysterical and insular.
It is the Germans who are thinking globally and whose maxim now seems to be: “keep calm and carry on”.