Since some time, our privileged partner in the European Union is fascinating us and resisting us at the same time. The first European economic power, Germany now seems to abandon this restraint, which has hitherto characterised its external and European policy, in order to exercise de facto political leadership in a Europe that is seeking. It is true that Germany now defends its legitimate national interests more than in the past. This development does not reflect the desire to assert any political supremacy, since the Federal Republic, which did not regain its full sovereignty until 1990 with German unity, immediately returned a large part of it to the EU in vital areas, first and foremost the currency. The fact that it now wants to play its full part in the shared government of the Union is rather the result of a new identity that has emerged over the generations. This identity builds on the experience of the challenges overcome, and above all on the confidence acquired in the capacity of public and private decision-makers, as well as society as a whole, to build a sustainable democratic, economic, social and monetary system that withstands the shocks of an unpredictable and unstable world. Taking full account of their past, the Germans have at the same time become aware of the progress made, of the stability of what they have rebuilt, and of the need to preserve it by confronting the future courageously. It is this collective identity that explains that Germany is now fully sovereign in itself, i.e. aware of its achievements and experience, proud of its principles and values, confident in its ability to offer choices to Europeans and to assume their responsibilities. How has this new “sovereign” Germany been built, and on what basis? It is this process, with multiple and intertwined trajectories, that attempts to trace and clarify the contributions of this work. In twelve paintings, the authors, eminent or senior experts associated with the CIRAC’s ‘competence network’, present the (re) patient and reasoned construction of the foundations, the liberating and creative earthquake of German and European reunification, and the perplexities of multi-piloting in a global and multipolar world. On reading these tables, it appears above all that what makes Germany’s unity today, and at the same time its success, is in fact a dynamic one: the constant search for a sustainable balance in the collective acceptance and management of change. An illuminating stocktaking for a perplexing Europe. René Lasserre Director of CIRAC Professor at the University of Cergy-Pontoise