In the not-so-distant past, France and Germany ran the EU as partners. No longer, due to robust German growth and French stagnation. It has gotten to the point where the Germans don’t even pretend to treat the French as equals anymore. And if President Obama wants to call Europe, he knows which number to use, and it isn’t answered in Paris or Brussels.
I always had trouble understanding exactly how the institutions in the Holy Roman Empire worked in practice, but the evolution of the EU has made it more clear to me. Substitute Angela Merkel for a Hapsburg emperor and it all starts to make sense.
The dual role of the German Chancellor as the head of state of an individual nation and the de facto leader of Europe is naturally going to create a whole new series of issues for the EU. This will be discussed in a future post.