As the European Union begins to disintegrate, who can provide the leadership to save it? German chancellor Angela Merkel is widely credited with finally answering Henry Kissinger's famous question about the Western alliance: "What is the phone number for Europe?" But if Europe's phone number has a German dialling code, it goes through to an automated answer: "Nein zu Allem."
This phrase – "No to everything" – is how Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, recently described the standard German response to all economic initiatives aimed at strengthening Europe. A classic case was Merkel's veto of a proposal by Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi to fund refugee programmes in Europe, North Africa, and Turkey through an issue of EU bonds, an efficient and low-cost idea also advanced by leading financiers such as George Soros.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/
