Christine Lagarde: The choice facing Europeans

Speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the official dinner of the Deutsche Bundesbank in Berlin, Germany

It is a pleasure to be here at the Bode Museum in Berlin.

More than two centuries ago, the poet Johann Paul Friedrich Richter described Berlin as “more a part of the world than a city”.[1] History would prove him right.

This city came to embody the upheavals that shaped Germany, Europe and the world, from the destruction of war to its decades-long division at the centre of the Cold War.

At key points during that time, West Germans and Europeans were confronted with the need to make critical choices. One set of relationships had to be prioritised over another.

In 1949, West Germans made such a choice in their first post-war election. Konrad Adenauer emerged as Chancellor with a clear commitment to anchor the Federal Republic firmly in the West.

Adenauer’s election had ripple effects across Europe. His politics of Westbindung helped set the direction for European integration in its formative years, laying foundations that would shape the decades that followed.

When the Wall fell in Berlin, East Germans too were finally able to make their choice. They chose freedom and a shared future with their compatriots in the West.

And then, for a time, the choices imposed by history seemed to fall away. To borrow Francis Fukuyama’s phrase, history itself appeared to have come to an end.

Europeans no longer had to choose so starkly between their relationships. Because those relationships were, at heart, complementary.

European integration could deepen at the same time as countries expanded their economic relationships across the world. Countries could take energy from Russia, demand from China and security from the United States.

Today, however, the full weight of history has returned.

Europe is entering a harsher, less forgiving world, one increasingly shaped by major powers willing to use their economic and geopolitical weight to their own advantage.