Abstract

Hans Magnus Enzensberger has been extremely dissatisfied with the state of Europe recently. On 15 May 2010, he expressed his disappointment and anger in an interview with The Guardian: ‘Europe is a great achievement but they are messing it up […] it is anti-European because they antagonise people without any reason for doing so. […] it is rolling back liberties which we have acquired.’ ² But who is to blame? For many observers, particularly outside Germany and those northern European countries with a similar financial ‘stability culture’, the answer appears to be obvious: Germany is at fault.