Germany risks squandering a golden opportunity

As a manufacturing giant, Germany for decades dragged its feet on EU liberalisation of services in which it historically lacked a comparative advantage, Sander Tordoir, chief economist of the Centre for European Reform, told me. But it too would benefit from deeper capital and services markets, especially with the US and China becoming less attractive export destinations. 

"It should be possible to offset some lost demand with internal demand, using Germany’s fiscal policy — and, hopefully, the fiscal space of the Netherlands and the Nordics,” Tordoir says. “Doing so while lowering barriers within the single market would supercharge these efforts by boosting intra-EU competition and the efficiency of spending.