Berlin, more than anywhere else, is powerfully aware that the public's ordeal in the pandemic can produce heaves and landslips, abrupt shifts and emotional eruptions in the European landscape, jeopardizing stability and mutual trust. It was this realization that led Angela Merkel to change course in May 2020 and lend special help to the countries affected.

Without the experience of the euro crisis, that decision would never have been contemplated. Old and new events interact and influence one another. Temporal sediments (to paraphrase Reinhart Koselleck once again) are constantly shifting. This demands of the politicians, who manoeuvre us through time, a seismographic sensitivity to aftershocks and displacements. The German chancellor noted how in the spring of 2020 harsh experiences from the previous decade surfaced. When €240 billion was made available in pandemic loans, Italy refused to accept the conditions – “our country is dying” said the leaders in Rome and Madrid – and so the money had to take the form of grants. Nor was it possible to ignore the fact that the Italian public's trust in the Union was plummeting and for two out of three Italians, leaving had become an option.

Shifts in the public sphere are pure politics. The outcome is not just the sum of objectifiable forces (such as a country's trade balance, arsenal or technological capabilities) but also, indeed above all, a matter of humour and sentiment, gratitude and rancour, memory and expectation, words and stories, expressed in mostly unstable balances and changing majorities. Yet that is no reason to dismiss the public mood as fickle. It can be read, felt and influenced. Moreover, public opinion holds tremendous power within it, capable of pushing aside or shattering many supposedly objective realities. A fact that became visible during the pandemic; rarely before had the public been such a catalyst for big innovative decisions in the Union.

The Hague and other Northern capitals also read the coronavirus crisis as a sequel to the euro crisis, but in revealing contrast to the chancellor in Berlin, they saw it as a simple repeat, the same collision once more. So they missed or ignored three major changes in the public and political sphere.