In the end, Emmanuel Macron may wish he hadn’t bothered.

After more than eight months of waiting for Angela Merkel to respond to his proposals for reforming the eurozone — a progressive (if vague) vision aimed at bullet-proofing the single currency against another existential crisis — Macron received the answer in the form of an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the Sunday bulletin of Germany’s establishment.

The gist: Berlin will put a little more money on the table and accept a bit more risk-sharing, but France and the rest of the eurozone can bury any lingering hope that Germany will pursue a great leap forward in eurozone integration by endorsing anything resembling a full-fledged fiscal union.

“Solidarity must never lead to a debt union, but must come in the form of help towards self-help,” Merkel told the newspaper.

That protestant prescription essentially cements the status quo at a time when many political observers are calling for a bold action in the eurozone in response to Italy's new Euroskeptic government and other pressures.

In Berlin, Macron’s proposals were met with a combination of skepticism and fear, especially among Merkel’s conservative base.

After the eurozone was caught flat-footed in its 10th year by the emergence of Greece’s debt crisis in 2009, forcing wealthy Germany to back a series of emergency bailouts to stave off the collapse of the euro, many economists argued the currency would remain exposed to such shocks as long as it wasn’t underpinned by a fiscal union.

To recap: When the euro was introduced, the European Central Bank took responsibility for setting the currency area’s monetary policy, but the power to tax, spend and invest remained firmly in the grip of national governments. In order to complement the ECB’s one-size-fits-all monetary policy and forestall another crisis, reformists argued the euro required more risk-sharing among member countries and pooling of financial resources to even out imbalances. Suggestions included eurozone-wide bank deposit insurance (to avoid bank runs) as well as a financial backstop to deal with failing banks. While there's been headway on some of those fronts, Germany, together with a few other northern countries, remains wary of taking on too much risk for its neighbors.

"Without some degree of fiscal union, the region will continue to face existential risks that policymakers should not ignore," the International Monetary Fund warned earlier this year.

Macron’s prosposals, which he laid out in a speech to the Sorbonne in September, were aimed at addressing such issues. He also pushed for a eurozone budget in the hundreds of billions of euros and for a eurozone finance minister with real power.

Macron’s only hope to salvage what remains of his eurozone vision is to focus on the few areas where Merkel shows a readiness to move.

In Berlin, Macron’s proposals were met with a combination of skepticism and fear, especially among Merkel’s conservative base.

Though no country has benefited more than Germany from the currency union, many Germans remain convinced that much of the rest of Europe — particularly the Mediterranean states — is trying to pick its pockets. The Greek bailouts, which cost Germany little in the grander scheme of things, only hardened that impression.

In fact, for much of the German establishment, Macron’s ideas are nothing less than an open invitation to raid Berlin’s treasury.

Last month, 154 German economics professors signed a five-point manifesto — published, like Merkel’s Sunday interview, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine — opposing Macron’s ideas, which they warned “carry high risk for European citizens.”

Given the pressure she has faced from within her own party to push back with Macron, Merkel’s tepid response is less than a surprise.

Macron’s only hope to salvage what remains of his eurozone vision is to focus on the few areas where Merkel shows a readiness to move. She backs the idea of a joint eurozone investment budget, albeit a modest one, and she’s ready to consider giving the European Stability Mechanism — the eurozone’s bailout fund — the capacity to extend short-term loans to countries under stress. The ESM, if Merkel gets her way, would be transformed into a European Monetary Fund with the power to evaluate EU countries' economies. Instead of the European Commission, it would be controlled by the states.

With the conservative wing of her Christian Democrats promising to resist Macron’s reform push, she has had little to work with.

The idea, first championed by ex-German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble last year, is typical of the technocratic, rule-based regimen Germans love and Paris has long resisted.

Nonetheless, given the pressure on Macron to show some success on the euro front, it’s easy to see how Merkel’s proposals, which aren’t far from those the two governments have been discussing, could merge, after a few technical compromises, into what the European Commission also proposed last week.

The main takeaway from Merkel’s interview, however, is that she seems to declare an end to the debate. With the conservative wing of her Christian Democrats promising to resist Macron’s reform push, and her coalition allies from the SPD too weak to seize the initiative, she has had little to work with.

Though her answer came much later than Macron would have liked, Merkel has now said how far she's willing to go.

And modest as the proposal is, Macron probably has little choice but to accept it.

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