Derek Scally: Brexit forces rethink of German attitudes to Europe

Just off the Kurfürstendamm boulevard in west Berlin you will find the Chelsea Farmers Club. More than 1,000km from Chelsea and with no farmers in sight, this shop-cum-club sells tweed jackets and multicoloured trousers to German men anxious to channel their inner British dandy.

It is hard to overstate the German love of all things British, and German Anglophiles who superficially have much in common with many Brexiteers, share their love of an Alan Bennett-style, Pimms-drinking England that may or may not ever have existed.

But the Brexit debate has opened up a crucial gap between the two. Unlike many Brexiteers, even the most ardent Anglophiles in Germany realise that memories of Britain's greatness – real or imagined – may be good for flogging books and loud trousers, but are not a robust foundation for national policy in a globalised world.

It's a strange time in Berlin. Britain has yet to leave the table – and voters may yet choose to stay – but there is already a palpable nostalgia among German officials for the dynamism, often headache-inducing but always compelling, that London brought to the Brussels negotiating table. And regardless of the Brexit result, it has helped shift attitudes in Germany to the EU.

Many of David Cameron’s reform demands – to combat so-called welfare tourism or to repatriate EU powers back to capitals – would have been deemed heresy in Germany a decade ago. But now German politicians jumped on the British reform bandwagon because the demands reflected public opinion in Germany, where Europhile attitudes are flagging thanks to the euro and refugee crises.

As the Leave camp took the lead in polls, Berlin abandoned its rhetorical restraint and sent out finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble to warn that leaving the EU would prompt a British economic shock – with no guarantee of regaining access to the common market.

Disintegration

Meanwhile, foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned of a full-scale EU disintegration, underpinned by Germany’s fear of drifting, without Britain, into the statist and protectionist waters of a new Club Med EU.

Germany’s economists agree there would be severe consequences for Germany if Britain – its third-largest export market worth €90 billion annually – finds itself outside the EU. Prof Clemens Fuest, president of the Ifo economist institute in Munich, has argued that Germany – in particular German industry – would be the EU’s biggest loser in the event of a Brexit, except for Britain itself.

And so there was little celebration in Berlin this week when yields on German 10-year bonds drifted into negative territory. The fact that Brexit-spooked investors were effectively willing to pay Germany to borrow their money is, they fear, a taste of greater instability to come.

Copycat votes

Senior Merkel

allies say Britain cannot expect much sympathy from Berlin should talks on an associate membership agreement commence. The motivation would not be malice but a determination to prevent copycat votes or cherry-picking endeavours to say yes to freedom of moment and services, no to financing the EU agriculture bill.

There is little doubt a British departure from the EU would boost the efforts of the new Alternative für Deutschland party to foster resentment towards the bloc, already building since the euro crisis.

Perhaps the greatest fear for Berlin is that the departure of an EU heavyweight would catalyse, with unpredictable consequences, the resentment in other EU member states towards Germany and its perceived EU leadership role.

Concerns for Northern Ireland have been raised only fleetingly in the German Brexit debate, with Steinmeier warning a Berlin audience that Brexit could rekindle "a conflict that has seemingly calmed down".

And what if Britain votes to stay? The Merkel administration is ready to keep the EU reform momentum going but wants Britain to expand its focus to EU strategic and reform issues beyond its narrow national interest: on EU governance, the migration crisis, security matters, Russia, Syria, Libya.

As the Brexit referendum enters its final week, nerves are frayed among 100,000 Britons in Germany. With the Leave side pulling ahead in polls, British expats have published a brochure predicting disaster for their personal and professional lives.

Back in the Chelsea Farmers Club, among the multicoloured socks and knitted poppies, owner Christoph Tophinke speaks for many Germans when he describes the vote as a faint-hearted attempt to recapture past glories as a stand-alone nation, blind to the realities of the globalised world.

“It doesn’t strike me as a show of strength,” he says, “more like an agitated pensioner waving their stick to get the young people out of their way.”