The leader of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU) has responded to French president Emmanuel Macron’s ideas for a “European renaissance” by offering some overlap with his vision, while also warning against too much centralisation, reports Reuters.
Under the title “Doing Europe Right”, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer echoed Macron by calling for a reform of the European Union’s migration policy, but rejected his idea for a European minimum wage and cautioned against collective debts.
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s response to Macron fills a void left by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is under pressure from her party to engage with him more fully after leaving her spokesman to simply say Germany supports discussions about the EU’s future.
“Our Europe needs to become stronger,” Kramp-Karrenbauer, who succeeded Merkel as CDU leader in December, wrote in an opinion piece for the Welt an Sonntag weekly newspaper.
But she added: “European centralism, European statism, the collectivisation of debts, a Europeanisation of social systems and the minimum wage would be the wrong way.”
That appeared to counter Macron’s call for a European minimum wage, adapted to each country, and also highlighted the entrenched resistance in Berlin to any moves that could make Germany liable for other countries’ debts.