Angela Merkel is a trail blazing chancellor in many ways.
She is the first East German and the first woman to lead Germany, but more importantly she is the first German who did not experience Germany’s dreadful history first-hand.
Her predecessors, men such as Helmut Kohl and Helmut Schmidt, experienced war and this gave them a drive to create the Europe we know today. This fervent support of the European project embraced poorer countries such as ours and allowed us to create modern Ireland.
Chancellor Merkel and any of her possible successors, while mindful of Germany’s past, don’t share Kohl’s fervent interest in the EU.
Germany is, in short, fast becoming a normal country and normal countries do what we have always done — look after number one.
Anybody who doubts this should look at Germany’s relations with Russia. Merkel has wooed her giant neighbour single-mindedly to secure gas supplies for Germany.
Just 10 years ago, Germany would have been uncomfortable going it alone and would have sought to secure a supply for Europe — while also objecting to Russia’s actions in places such as Georgia.
Today, Germany pursues her owns interests much as France and Britain do. It is not for nothing that we use the German word realpolitik in international relations when describing politics based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations.
That Germany is once again a normal country is a cause for celebration. She is not only Europe’s economic powerhouse but also a military powerhouse and her virtual absence from the world of foreign affairs has left a political vacuum that has been filled by sometimes delusional neighbours.
While this inevitable and irreversible process is welcome, it poses some challenges to us here in Ireland. If the once-benign motor of European integration is spluttering, then we and other smaller nations must step up to the mark or watch the European project die on its feet.
Here in Ireland, we are already seeing some of the effects of Germany’s new attitude to the European project.
Back in the 1990s, Chancellor Kohl, a sly and somewhat bumptious pork-barrel politician of a type often found here, would have developed some sort of package of agricultural grants to entice sceptical interest groups such as the farmers to vote ’Yes’. He would, in short, have attempted to buy the Lisbon Treaty referendum with money and meaningless treaty protocols.
This time round, there have been no such financial incentives, merely an icily polite request for a second vote from the rest of the EU. The other governments have not even bothered to give our administration a convincing fig leaf as they head into the campaign, while their exasperation with our concerns about non sequiturs such as abortion and military conflict is evident.
This is not to say that Germany has done nothing to help us.
In fact, it was Chancellor Merkel’s comments earlier this year that Ireland would be rescued if the economy collapsed that turned our fortunes on the bond markets and reduced the cost of Irish borrowing.
While she got precious little thanks from this country for the guarantee, it was an important turning point in the world’s worrying enthusiasm to compare Ireland to Iceland and bet against our continued survival.
To paraphrase John F Kennedy, the torch has passed to a new generation of Germans, born after the war, disciplined by a prosperous peace and unwilling to continue paying for the sins of their fathers.
This central reality means Europe is no longer on autopilot and it is why we in Ireland need to pay more attention to the European project.
As the Germans become less enthusiastic, we need to become more enthusiastic or accept that Europe will stumble and fall at a time when other superpowers are rising in the Far East.
