While still incomplete, the European policy platform emerging from coalition negotiations between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) appears to be strongly sovereignist.
Negotiators have even proposed allowing Germans to vote in referendums - previously taboo - on major decisions involving enlarging the European Union, transferring more powers to Brussels or committing more money at EU level.
Merkel's allies say that plan, which would clamp a new padlock on European integration on top of national referendum requirements in France on further EU enlargement and in Britain on any more transfer of sovereignty to European institutions, is likely to be quashed.
Even without a referendum lock, Berlin's would-be coalition partners have agreed to other restrictions on EU integration, limiting the scope of a planned European banking union by rejecting any common fiscal backstop for euro zone banks for the foreseeable future.
That means each member state will be liable for cleaning up its own banks if they have to be wound up after the European Central Bank, in its new role as single banking supervisor, conducts stringent asset tests next year.
As a last resort, a country unable to bear the cost could apply for a loan from the European Stability Mechanism rescue fund, but that would add to its national debt and come with the stigma of internationally supervised conditions.
Source: Reuters
Source: Reuters
