Germany will have to learn leadership, and France followship. Both will find it a wrenching experience. The rules of the European game changed for ever with the reunification of Germany. It has taken the euro crisis to spell out the brutal implications.

One has to feel some sympathy for Angela Merkel. Germany’s chancellor has been excoriated in turn for absent and for oppressive leadership. At one moment she is said to be standing idly by while the euro burns, and at the next of issuing teutonic diktats about the terms of its survival. Germany, the rest of us have been reminded, has always been too big for Europe.

The new German question asks whether Europe – whether it is the European Union or a more closely integrated eurozone – can find a new equilibrium now that Germany is so visibly the preponderant power. This in turn marks the return of the Franco-German question. Berlin is assuming the role of leader with a mixture of hesitancy and tetchiness. Paris will struggle mightily to accept the place of follower.