A common European safe asset is still unlikely

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, flew to Dublin on July 28th just to hand-deliver a four-letter message: Nein. The recipient, Micheál Martin, his Irish counterpart, took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union at the start of the month, and a new seven-year EU budget needs to be hammered out. Embattled at home, in part because of spending cuts and tax increases, Mr Merz insisted that the current proposal, around €1.7trn ($2trn), was unacceptable. “We need a budget draft that cuts across the board—to the tune of several hundred billion euros.”