Moral Leadership or Moral Hazard? Germany’s Response to the Refugee Crisis and Its Impact on European Solidarity

Abstract

Germany has long played a quiet but essential role in moving the EU forward. Recently, external crises pushed Germany to embrace a visible leadership role, providing the EU with resources to both muddle through and even expand institutional competence. In 2015 Germany led in managing Europe’s refugee crisis. Which of three scenarios presented by the editors best describes the impact that the crisis and Germany’s leadership had on the EU? I argue that German leadership in Europe was constrained by weak EU institutions in the issue area of immigration, institutions in which Germany is embedded. When constrained by institutional weakness, Germany cannot successfully lead by coercion. In this case, however, it did, thereby dividing Europe Although the European refugee crisis receded, EU solidarity was weakened. Europe could only “muddle through.”

Although the Schuman Declaration of May 9, 1950 is considered by most scholars to be the founding document of European integration, Robert Schuman did not use the word “integration,” but rather the word “solidarity” in his Declaration. I use the word “solidarity” here in the sense that he used it: “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements… which create a de facto solidarity.” Solidarity—or a strong sense of unity—was at the center of the European project, and for Schuman it meant that collective achievements would create European unity and a sense among the members of a common European destiny, which, in turn, would help them to overcome their national rivalries. For Schuman, the new Community would need strong institutions that could create those achievements and overcome collective action problems. My argument is closest to the “liberal institutionalist” school of thought on European integration as indicated by the creation, strength, and scope of EU institutions and governing structures (Gilpin 2001; Eichengreen 2006; Sadeh and Verdun 2009), rather than in the broader sense of political and cultural integration. I use the term “solidarity” to signal a departure from the transactional feature of intergovernmentalism and to critique the liberal institutionalist approach by suggesting that institutions in and of themselves can only lead to deeper integration if “solidarity” is achieved.