Why Germans are federalists

摘要

What do Germans mean by a "more federal" European Union? In centralised countries like France and Britain, the words suggest a super-state grabbing ever more power from its constituent parts. In Germany, with its 16 semi-autonomous Laender (states), just the opposite: less centralism, not more. Indeed, many of the Laender are already worried by what Edmund Stoiber, the premier of Bavaria, calls "creeping centralisation by Brussels".