<i>&gt; I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country&#x27;s perspective on Europe?</i><p>They are responsible for the country&#x27;s actions towards other countries. To make it more clear: I deeply hope that they are not really backed by the population, and that they will either notice that on their own, or that the next elections which show a shift towards &quot;working together&quot; instead of &quot;against each other&quot; in Europe.<p>We can&#x27;t solve all issues in Europe if every country optimized only for themselves, ignoring their neighbours.<p><i>&gt; the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens&#x27; viewpoints fairly and transparently</i><p>Note that there are also European politicians (the European parliament), which are elected as well and serve their citizens&#x27; viewpoints as well. Interestingly, those manage to find better solutions, thinking about all Europeans despite representing just a subset of them. Unfortunately, the European parliament has not much power in the overall EU process, which is another real pity.<p><i>&gt; It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.</i><p>Our German politicians have (and always had) a disproportionally large influence in Europe. So there was never a need for Germany to distance from Europe. However, this also led to suboptimal solutions in the past, to say the least. But to me, this is not a sign that the &quot;European project&quot; doesn&#x27;t work. For me, it shows that we aren&#x27;t consequent enough. The member governments (read: European commission) have too much influence and the European parliament (which is the only instance that equally represents all European citizens) doesn&#x27;t have enough influence.