Germany and the European Community

The end of the cold war brought both the collapse of the Soviet Union and the unification of the two German states that had been created from the rubble of the Second World War. Now the most powerful state in the continent, will the new Germany inevitably create a Germanized Europe? The surprising answer that emerges from the essays in this volume is that this will not happen. The powerful integrative forces within the European Community have created a framework that is now too powerful to be overawed by any one member, however strong. In analyses of business, organized labor, and German policy-making institutions, the contributors to Germany and the European Community emphasize the remarkable dilution of national sovereignty that EC mechanisms have produced. Even the formidable Bundesbank is not totally immune, and this book includes several highly perceptive essays on the relationship between Germany and the European financial system.