Periodically, the EU goes into freeze-frame mode. Decisions are postponed, debates muted, time stands still. It happened for the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations as we waited nervously for the British people's verdict on Thatcherism.

The same can be said of the German elections, although, paradoxically, there is little sense this time that the same seismic shift in European policy is at stake.

However, the German elections have hung like a shadow over much of our debate in the last year.

On the one hand, the arguments about who should qualify for the euro were fuelled by Chancellor Helmut Kohl's need to demonstrate that he alone could be trusted to defend the euro, the "child of the deutschmark". And Mr Gerhard Schroder, moving from contender to candidate of an intensely pro-EU party, moved from scepticism to support for the euro.

Gradually, to the intense relief of its EU partners, the German debate turned from whether it would happen to who would manage the transition best.

On the other hand, there has been the phoney war over Agenda 2000 and the carving up of the EU's budget for the new millennium. How much of Bonn's bluster over the "unfairness" of its net contributions to the EU budget has merely been pre-election posturing? Less, one suspects, than countries like Ireland might hope.

Now the real battle can begin. And the same is true on countless other fronts where policy development has gone on hold. Yet diplomats and journalists believe we will see a fundamental continuity of German policy on the EU. There are some differences but largely of nuance.

An SPD-led government may be willing to fudge how Germany closes the gap between its payments and receipts, but close that gap we will have to do.

Less beholden than the CDU to the rural vote, it may also be somewhat more willing to back British demands for radical reform of the Common Agriculture Policy. However, there is still a more than a sufficient majority of member-states to ensure that talk of going beyond what the Commission has already proposed is likely to be futile.

An SPD-led government is also likely to be more sympathetic to further EU integration in environmental policy, fiscal policy and economic co-ordination, going with the prevailing tide rather than footdragging on such issues as Dr Kohl has done.

And with the departure of Dr Kohl, it is possible there will be some undermining of the strong personal ties which cement the Paris-Bonn axis which has driven the EU forward politically for decades. The SPD has already signalled it wants to bring the UK closer into the loop so a new alliance may begin to emerge.

Yet, although there will be no upheavals or dramatic changes of direction, the changing of the guard in Bonn is, nonetheless, momentous on three counts - it marks the passing of an era of giants, a generational shift, and the culmination of a global social democratic revival. Today, 13 governments in the EU will either be led by or contain social democrats - only Ireland and Spain are bucking the trend.

Mrs Thatcher first, then Mr Mitterrand, then Dr Kohl, and in their places political modernisers, unencumbered by either the legacy of the war or political ideology.

Essentially pragmatists, at ease with the market, the new breed wears its social democracy lightly, expressing it in terms of a new reconciliation of capitalism with caring, the "third way".

The Blair-Clinton mantra of personal responsibility and their antistatist rhetoric may not be as new as they pretend, borrowing as they do from the ideas of social democrats like Mr Tony Crosland and welfare reforms in Denmark and Sweden.

However, the packaging of the old wine in new bottles has been brilliantly effective and politicians all over Europe have rushed to describe themselves as their country's Mr Tony Blair, Mr Schroder no less than Mr Lionel Jospin or Mr Romano Prodi.

It remains to be seen how cohesive the "third way" glue is but tiffs within the social democratic family will not stop them working together to remould in their image the European Commission when it is replaced next year.

There is no doubt that Dr Kohl's personality and drive have dominated European politics. His relationship with Mr Mitterrand made German unification possible. Dr Kohl saw the opportunity and Mr Mitterrand provided the formula which would sell to their EU partners - the expanded, more powerful Germany would be anchored in a collective European endeavour, the single currency.

Since then, the engine of European enlargement has been Dr Kohl. And despite his troubles on the home front on the demise of the deutschmark, his ability to fix on the big picture of the euro as an essentially political project has been crucial to keeping it on the rails.

Europe also paid a price for the Kohl steamroller. The costs of unification were dramatically underestimated and contributed, through their impact on interest rates, to the recession of the early 1990s. And Dr Kohl's malign influence in backing early recognition of Croatia undoubtedly contributed to the downward spiral which led to war in former Yugoslavia.

And Dr Kohl has been very much the last of the post-war generation of German politicians who have sublimated national interests in European integration as a means of steering renascent Germany away from expansionist aspirations.

As Mr Schroder, or any younger German leader, establishes himself on the European stage, history will weigh less heavily. Bonn will, inevitably, begin to express its own interests more directly - some suggest the row about EU payments reflects precisely this process.

Yesterday's election is thus unlikely to bring any sudden changes. Yet under the surface, the tectonic - or should I say Teutonic - plates are moving.