Germany goes to polls focused on cost not value of Europe
European disintegration is far more advanced than closer union ever was
Gen Charles de Gaulle: To survive, Europe needs a return to big politics in the style of the French militarist, and Helmut Kohl, Jacques Delors and François Mitterrand. Photograph: PA Wire
A century ago, in March 1915, the German philosopher Georg Simmel wrote in a Berlin newspaper: “It’s not enough that the idea of Europe doesn’t die, it should live.”