After her re-election, Angela Merkel will again propose to the EU that the German economic model thrift, probity, austerity and a formal partnership between employers and workers should be the norm for all Europe. But that partnership, once admired for its fairness, is failing. Now employers revel in local and global inequality.

The Balkan countries are haemorrhaging migrants, and their remaining populations are shrinking and ageing. Just taking a census to establish the identity of citizens is a political minefield.