Two Thirds Of Germans Now Eurosceptic

A Case about Bird Flu highlights a poll by Allensbach which shows that 67% of Germans now have little or no trust in the EU, indicating a dramatic loss of confidence in the project, and only a minority believe that the eurozone stability fund will save the euro currency.

Also today - ironically on Labour day - Germany's restrictions on free movement of workers, which were negotiated in 2004 when Eastern European countries joined the EU, hits the 7 year deadline and comes to an end. The Telegraph reports that the Germans are now bracing themselves for a influx of Polish workers on the scale that happened here in the UK:

Under European Union rules that come into force on Sunday, May 1, Germany will open its doors fully to jobseekers from Poland and other Eastern European nations for the first time, paving the way for a flood of cut-price carpenters, plumbers and other budget labour of the kind that swept Britain in 2004.

However, with German trade unions predicting that up to a million Poles may arrive in the first year alone, not everyone feels like welcoming the new arrivals from the other side of the River Oder.

Now Germany's moratorium is expiring - just as the global recession and last summer's Eurozone crash mean severe cuts in health, social service and welfare budgets in Europe's biggest economy.

That has fuelled a German swing against immigration in general, and a growing sense that a people which has long supported the EU project no longer gets a fair deal.

The deadline also applies to France and Italy - just what these countries need when they are already squealing about current problems in the Schengen area. Immigration and nationalism is now beginning to become an issue in a country which for very obvious historical reasons has avoided debate:

There was also rare criticism of Mrs Merkel from a senior member of her own centre-right party, Erika Steinbach, who warned that the CDU was seen as too left-wing on immigration, and that a charismatic politician could easily peel off voters to a new hard-right party.

Another renegade ex-CDU member, Rene Stadtkewitz, has already announced the creation of a right-wing Freedom Party similar to that of Geert Wilders in Holland.

Success for such a party would mark a decisive break with Germany's post war-liberal consensus, in which memories of Nazism have often inhibited frank discussion on nationalist issues.

It's all very well promoting the ideal of abolishing something as intrinsically important to the human condition as the nation state, but all that happens is it strongly provokes the very reaction you're trying to abolish.