Why Berlin needs to find once again the European heart

You see, president, he said, just like you cannot stop the current of the Rein (another ‘deep current'!) you cannot stop the unification of the two Germanys. Years later, in the crucial months of the approval of the single currency, Kohl dismissed the Bundesbank's veto to Italian participation in the name of the higher interest of the construction of Europe. Helmut Kohl and his predecessor Helmut Schmidt were both great Europeanists, "European citizens born in German land".
Will Germany's current leadership know how to find the inspiration that allowed the Country that is the heart and engine of European integration to stay on course in the most difficult postwar moments? True, German public opinion is prey of ancestral fears – inflation – and dismayed by the moral gamble (helping who is undergoing difficulties risks distracting them from shoring up accounts). However, real leaders guide public opinion, are not guided by it.

Maybe the fear of inflation– the creation of liquidity, monetizing debt … – is the deeper urge that guides German behavior. An urge that made the Maastricht Treaty deny the ECB the possibility of directly financing of public deficits. A ban that is historically justifiable: as the Duke of Saint Simon in 18th-century France said, the power to print money can be pernicious in an absolute monarchy where the creation of money is subject to the "necessities of a war badly undertaken and ill sustained, the avarice of a first minister, favorite or mistress, the prodigality of a King …" Many other episodes confirm this, up until hyperinflation in the Weimar republic, still imprinted in the conscious and unconscious of German citizens.

But also here, it is difficult to make a distinction. In a democracy, the creation of money is just like any other weapon of economic policy, a medicine that has to be dosed but that would be irrational not to use. As a famous economist, Willem Buiter (a former member of the Bank of England's MPC) said, a total ban on creating liquidity by lending money directly to Governments makes no sense: "Just because it can be mismanaged does not mean you have to throw the tool away. You can drown in water, but this does not mean you cannot have a glass whey you are thirsty"
It is up to German leadership to explain to its co-citizens how much they benefitted from economic and monetary union. It is necessary to explain how aid – sharing European public debt, the prompt and adequate preparation of a solid safety net, a call to the ECB to be more active in monetary support to deserving Countries undergoing crises – is not an act of charity but an act of enlightened profit.

There is too much at stake to continue with policies of small details, aimed at getting concessions and playing on opposing interests. It is time to say loud and clear what the high interest of all of Europe is, so that this crisis can become a spring board towards a European sovereignty that is greater than the sum of the sovereignty that each Country gives up. As Riccardo Bacchelli wrote, who recites in the Lord's Prayer the "Your will be done" does not give up their individuality but, mysteriously enhances it, a "European will" becomes for each Country a pedestal that increases its nobility and moral stature.

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