In that rare thing, an Angela Merkel statement that aged well, the long-serving German chancellor worried that Europe accounted for 7 per cent of the world’s population, a quarter of its economic output and half of its social spending. Those numbers have modulated somewhat in the subsequent 13 years, but the gist of her point holds.
More than that, it has gained a new urgency. The reason Merkel wanted some welfare trimmings was to preserve Europe’s “way of life”. The mission now is to defend Europe’s lives. How, if not through a smaller welfare state, is a better-armed continent to be funded?
