The European Union does Germany a lot of good. To say that the country would develop better or worse without the common currency would be risky. However, the fact is that Germany is doing much better than other EU-members and the Eurozone has never been so dominated by one country. Germany has been growing faster at the regional as well as at the national level and has been gaining its relevance at others’ expense. Accusations of German supremacy may well be grounded, but then the question is who is to blame? Those who are able to improve or those who are lagging behind?

GEFIRA’s analysis of the GDP changes for different EU countries in the years 2000-2015 leads to the following conclusions:

The old Eurozone (EA12) economical convergence between countries has been reversed after the crisis; German regions have been growing as fast as less-developed countries since the 2004 EU enlargement.

The euro has been often accused of having caused the problems faced by Southern Europe. The euro used to be undervalued for German economy and supported its exports, while for countries like Italy, Greece or Spain it was too strong, inducing their trade deficit and a large debt. There should also be no doubt that Germans have had a decisive word during the Greek crisis and that the fate of Greek citizens is at the hands of Wolfgang Schäuble and Angela Merkel rather than of Aleksis Tsipras. Conservative German economic and monetary policy is opposed also by France, the second largest EU-economy.