But there is something that I personally under-estimated, I must admit, because knowing that we could not go any further with federalism, I believed in cooperation - in the context of the triptych: "competition, cooperation, solidarity". I believed in cooperation and I was wrong. During this period, the Single Market with the Single Currency had given rise to an increasingly large diversification, a specification of production, to the benefit of some countries, of which Germany, and to the detriment of others.

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We know now the strength of Germany and I am absolutely appalled when I hear economists talking about comparable competitiveness as if it were possible to club together in the same model Germany, Portugal and Greece. Europe is founded on the concept of diversity, can it live with this diversity or will it have to accept the implicit domination of Germany and its rules?