The Germans are at it again.

In a tactic that has much in common with “rope a dope,” Chancellor Angela Merkel is being coy about Berlin’s new willingness to entertain eurozone reforms like a common budget and finance minister.

This apparent concession to newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron is a replay of how Germany lured the European Union into a joint currency — resisting at first and then finally, ever so reluctantly, giving in as long as Germany dictated the terms, including rules that ensured the EURUSD, -0.06% would be as strong as the deutsche mark.

The proposed reforms that Merkel said she is now ready to consider may or may not be good for all eurozone members, but it’s a sure bet they will be good for Germany.

The rules will be set by a country where the finance minister believes that a balanced budget or a surplus is a good thing, even when every other country in the EU and the rest of the world is begging Berlin to run deficit to stimulate growth and reduce unemployment in the bloc as a whole.

As long as the reforms don’t include political union with a genuine European Parliament, a common fiscal regime will face the same fate as a common monetary regime — it will be driven solely by Germany’s domestic political concerns.

This precludes any sense of solidarity with nations that have different work habits, different priorities, and different gains in productivity, and which may suffer high unemployment and “internal devaluation” if they fail to keep up with the Germans.

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This is what happened with the euro. Germany insisted the European Central Bank be located in Frankfurt, like Germany’s central bank, and be structured the same way as the Bundesbank. Other nationals were allowed to be president as long as they toed the orthodox line prescribed by Germany (and now they want Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann to succeed Mario Draghi as ECB president).

And without a doubt, a European finance minister would be located, if not exactly in Berlin, close enough for the German government to keep him or her under its thumb, and a common budget would be subject to a national veto Germany would not hesitate to exercise.

Merkel’s intimations of EU reform at a business conference this week in Berlin had enough weasel words for Germany to insist on any number of restrictions and controlling mechanisms.

“We could think about a common finance minister, as long as the framework is right and if we don’t mutualize in the wrong place, but leave risks, decision-making, and liabilities always reasonably in a single hand,” she said, somewhat opaquely. “We can very well think about a euro-budget if it’s clear that we are really strengthening structures with it and achieving sensible results.”

We all know who will decide just what is “reasonable” and “sensible” in this context (hint: it won’t be Macron).

None of this is necessarily evil or malicious, but it is inevitable as long as the German chancellor is beholden solely to the German Parliament and German voters.

Without full political union, the question of whether the EU will include a European Germany or will be de facto a German Europe has long since been answered. A common budget and finance minister would simply be the next step.

In the meantime, Merkel is pursuing her ambition to at least match the 16-year tenure of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died last week, as she campaigns for her fourth four-year term.

There is little reason to doubt that, health permitting, Merkel would be happy to outdo her erstwhile mentor and go for a fifth term in 2021, when she will be 67.

Then she would no longer bear comparison so much to Britain’s Iron Lady, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was forced by politics to bow out after 11 years, and resemble more Queen Elizabeth II or Queen Victoria, whose reigns extended for decades.

The best comparison for Merkel, however, may well be Otto von Bismarck, who forged the disparate German states into an empire (the second German empire, for those counting) and ran it as chancellor for, well, 19 years — a record Merkel could beat if she completed a fifth term.

If this seems too fanciful, consider that 12 years, let alone the 16 within Merkel’s grasp, is unconscionably long for an individual to head the government in a Western democracy.

Keep in mind, however, that if Britain has been practicing democracy off and on since the Magna Carta and France since the French Revolution, Germany, with the brief exception of the Weimar Republic, has had a genuinely democratic government only since 1949.

What seems to lie most deeply in the nation’s DNA is the ambition to dominate Europe. Germany’s first empire, which included much of Western Europe, dates back to Charlemagne, whose Frenchified name sounds harmless compared to the German moniker that is more apt for the king of the Franks, Karl der Grosse.

The second empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II launched the continent into World War I, and the would-be third empire under Adolf Hitler briefly did rule virtually all of Europe.

The goal of the EU’s predecessor groupings was to keep Germany tame and peaceful. But the evolution of the bloc has permitted a reunified Germany to become the most powerful member of the EU, in economic and now in political terms.

Historically aggressive, Germans now often seem driven by the conviction that they know best how to run things — and that is the tenor of Merkel’s remarks this week reserving to herself the judgment of what is reasonable and sensible.

Macron clearly has the ambition to correct the imbalance in Europe, but Merkel will find it easy to mollify him. Titles, for instance, matter a lot to the French. Macron at 39 may already be experiencing his Alexander the Great moment with no worlds left to conquer and would no doubt love to be called the first president of Europe.

The ultimate irony would be if Macron were smart enough to meet Merkel’s Bismarck and raise her his Napoleon, to end up exerting French dominance in a unified Europe.