欧洲一体化将错过一个罕见的机遇？

Economies are growing; unemployment is falling. From Paris comes an avalanche of ideas to reinvigorate the EU. In Berlin, a polite public reception for French president Emmanuel Macron’s expansive vision struggles to conceal an ever tightening grip on Germany’s cheque book. Is Europe, you wonder, about to miss a rare opportunity?

经济在增长;失业率在下降。巴黎提出了一堆重振欧盟(EU)的想法。在柏林，对法国总统埃马纽埃尔•马克龙(Emmanuel Macron)远大抱负的公开礼貌回应，很难掩盖德国日益收紧支票簿的事实。人们不禁在想，欧洲一体化事业是否即将错过一个罕见的机遇?

For several years, Germany bemoaned the absence of a serious partner in Paris — a politician in the Elysée ready to modernise the French economy and restore the Franco-German dynamic to EU politics. If only, German policymakers lamented, the burden of European leadership could again be shared.

德国多年来抱怨在法国政府中找不到一个正经的合作伙伴，即爱丽舍宫中没有一位有如下决心的政治家：让法国经济现代化、并恢复法国在欧盟政治中与德国对等的地位。德国政策制定者哀叹道，要是领导欧洲的重担再次有人来分担就好了。

Angela Merkel’s government has got what it asked for. And more. Mr Macron’s passionate Europeanism is fused with the realism that says that France must put its own economic house in order. The months since the presidential election have seen the budget deficit cut, labour laws liberalised and taxes reduced. Mr Macron is paying for his seat at the table.

安格拉•默克尔(Angela Merkel)政府的这个愿望得到了满足——可以说得到了超额满足。马克龙炙热的欧洲主义融合了现实主义，后者告诉他：法国必须理顺自己的经济。自大选以来的几个月里，法国削减了预算赤字、放松了劳工法并削减了税赋。马克龙正在为获得自己的话语权付出实实在在的努力。

For Europe, the timing is as good as it is likely to get. The need for Europe to reinvent itself — for reforms to align the EU’s capacity with today’s challenges — for once coincides with the opportunity.

对欧洲一体化事业来说，时机再好不过了。欧洲重塑自身的需求——通过改革让自身能力能够应对当今挑战——总算与机遇相吻合了。

Some problems may not go away soon — the slide to illiberalism in parts of eastern Europe, the collision between Spain and Catalan separatists. But the cloud of perpetual crisis has lifted. Economic confidence in the eurozone is at its highest since 2001, the migration crisis has abated and populism mostly has been temporarily checked.

一些问题可能不会很快消失——东欧某些地方出现反自由主义的倒退，西班牙政府与加泰罗尼亚分裂主义者杠上了。但持久性危机的阴云已经散去。欧元区的经济信心处于2001年以来的最高水平，移民危机缓解，民粹主义也基本上暂时得到遏制。

The challenges speak for themselves. The eurozone has been patched up, but the monetary union lacks strong economic foundations. The monopolistic power of American technology behemoths calls for an EU-wide sharpening of competition and tax rules. The 2015 refugee crisis exposed the weakness of the Union’s external frontier and tensions between national immigration rules and the Schengen open borders regime. Populism has exposed real grievances among the left-behinds.

挑战不言而喻。欧元区的窟窿得到了修补，但这个货币联盟缺乏坚实的经济基础。美国科技巨头的垄断力量，要求在整个欧盟范围内出台更为严厉的反垄断和税收法规。2015年难民危机暴露出两点：欧盟外部边界的脆弱、成员国自己的移民法规与申根开放边境制度之间的矛盾。民粹主义暴露出被落在后面的人们发自内心的不满。

Framed with the outsize confidence of a politician who had just upended the political order of France’s Fifth Republic, the vivid colours of Mr Macron’s project were always going to clash with the greys of Berlin. What I see now, however, are German politicians falling into a trap that the Brits never stepped out from during four decades of EU membership. Europe, in this self-defeating mindset, is a series of zero-sum transactions — entries on a bean-counter’s balance sheet, rather than the backbone of the continent’s peace and prosperity.

作为一名刚刚颠覆了法兰西第五共和国政治秩序的政治家，马克龙眼下信心爆棚，他描绘的多彩图景与柏林的灰色现实发生碰撞是不可避免的。然而，我现在看到的是，德国政治家正在踏入一个陷阱，这个陷阱正是英国在身为欧盟成员国的40年时间里始终未能挣脱的。以这种自己害自己的心态来看，欧洲一体化是一系列零和交易——是一个“铁公鸡”在资产负债表上记录的一笔笔账，而非支撑欧洲大陆和平和繁荣的支柱。

The Germany of not so long ago took a broader view. Not from altruism but for good reasons of selfish national interest. The Federal Republic’s economic welfare and physical security, not to say the reunification of the two Germanies, has all along rested on the three pillars of the postwar European order. Now they are being called into question.

就在不久前，德国还是视野宽阔的——不是出于利他主义，而是出于一些纯粹考虑本国利益的充分理由。德意志联邦共和国的经济福祉和国土安全——更不用说两德的统一——全都有赖于战后欧洲秩序的三个支柱。现在，这几个支柱正受到质疑。

The EU was at once the instrument of reconciliation with France and the answer to the fabled German question — how to accommodate a nation too big for its own continent and yet too small for the world. More than incidentally, it also supplied the marketplace for resurgent German industry. The Nato alliance added an essential security guarantee in the form of the US presence on the continent; and the Helsinki accords of 1975 put to rest the quarrels over borders long at the heart of European wars.

欧盟既是与法国实现和解的工具，又是如下这个著名德国问题的答案：如何容纳一个对欧洲来说太大、对世界而言又太小的国家?欧盟也为复兴的德国工业提供了市场，这不仅仅是偶然。通过让美国参与欧洲的防卫，北约(NATO)带来了重要的安全保障;而1975年的《赫尔辛基协议》(Helsinki)结束了长期处于欧洲战争核心的一些边界纠纷。

Events are chipping away at each of the three. Donald Trump’s elevation to the White House puts a question mark over how long the US will remain a European power. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine scorns the terms of Helsinki. For its part, the EU is losing Britain — an awkward partner maybe, but a European power for all that.

这三个支柱正在受到一系列事件的削弱。唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)当选为美国总统，让美国还会在欧洲呆多久成了未知数。俄罗斯吞并克里米亚并入侵乌克兰东部，践踏了《赫尔辛基协议》达成的条件。欧盟本身失去了英国——尽管英国对欧盟事业一直不能算热心，但它毕竟是一个欧洲强国。

When Berlin’s policymakers dismiss Mr Macron’s plans for a eurozone budget as no more than a call for additional cash transfers from German taxpayers, they turn away from this broader understanding of the national interest. When politicians say the answer to eurozone strains is for others to behave more like, well, Germany, you wonder whether we are on the road from a European Germany to a German Europe.

当柏林政策制定者把马克龙的欧元区预算计划视为只不过是要求德国纳税人掏更多钱的计划时，他们就放弃了对国家利益更高瞻远瞩的那种理解。当政客们表示解决欧元区危机的办法是让其他国家学习德国的行事方式时，人们不禁纳闷，我们是否正在走上一条从属于欧洲的德国转向属于德国的欧洲的道路?

The game is not lost. If one effect of the success in the election of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany was to shift politics in a nationalist direction, another was to persuade mainstream politicians that Germany badly needs a new deal to underpin Schengen. Reform of Schengen in return for strengthening the eurozone?

这盘棋并没有输。如果说排外的德国新选择党(Alternative for Germany)在选举中的胜利的一个影响是让政治转向民族主义方向，那另一个影响就是说服主流政治家，德国亟需一份新协议来支持申根。是不是应该为加强欧元区而改革申根协议?

The chancellor’s allies say she is constrained for the moment by the sensitive coalition negotiations with the more Eurosceptic Free Democrats. Ms Merkel will never be an instinctive European, but she understands the geopolitics that root Germany’s interests in the architecture of European integration.

默克尔的盟友们表示，她正在与立场更偏向“疑欧”的自由民主党(Free Democrat)进行敏感的结盟谈判，这让她眼下束手束脚。默克尔永远不会本能地支持欧洲一体化，但是她理解让德国利益扎根于欧洲一体化架构中的地缘政治。

Others will tell you that France and Germany always start from very different places. French enthusiasm and German scepticism mark a natural division of labour. What matters is they then show the political will to strike a balance. Maybe. In Mr Macron France has a leader with the courage to speak for a stronger Europe. He is waiting for an answer from Berlin.

其他人将会告诉你，法德一开始总是分歧很大。法国的热情和德国的多疑代表着一种天然的“劳动分工”。重要的是，他们之后拿出达成妥协的政治意愿。或许如此。法国如今有了一个有勇气主张加强欧洲一体化的领导人——马克龙，他正在等待柏林的答复。

The writer at present is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin

本文作者目前是柏林罗伯特•博世基金会(Robert Bosch Academy)理查德•冯•魏茨泽克(Richard von Weizsäcker)研究员

philip.stephens@ft.com 译者/裴伴