Why were the Germans so resistant? After all, Germany had its fair share of ailing banks that might have benefited from a common fund. But the hard truth was that German taxpayers did not want to pay for other people’s bailouts, inside Germany or out. In a broader sense, the question of national versus federal solutions was for Merkel not just a matter of euros and cents. Since 2005 she had been toiling amid the wreckage of Europe’s failed effort to give itself a constitution.
