4. Has Germany Fallen Out of Love with Europe?

This chapter argues that, contrary to expectations raised by the ‘normalisation’ debate, the crisis in Germany reflects both its post-war European identity and the incorporation of ordoliberal values into understandings of Europe. While both German elites and media actors present the Euro crisis as a broad European crisis threatening the very project of European integration, the crisis has also seen the development of a particularly German flavour of European solidarity and the ‘good European’ based on an ‘ordoliberal ethic’ of economic discipline and individual responsibility. Hostility to Greece in the conservative and populist press can be understood in this light–rather than signalling a strengthening of German national identity, this instead represents the development of a new Northern European identity from which Greece and other southern Europeans are excluded.