If all goes well, it shows the EU can be a force for good and Germany can lead it. If it goes wrong, then it would raise all sorts of questions.

It's hugely significant for the Germans in symbolic terms. The danger is real. God forbid if there are casualties. I don't know how the Germans would react.

Germany had priced itself out of the market by the late-1990s. It is basically pricing itself back into the market.

Countries like France and Germany just aren't ready for any further expansion of the EU from an economic point of view. The negotiations with Turkey basically have to be forgotten about for the next five or six years.

Within Europe, Germany wasn't exactly a leader for reform, nor a leader in anything, and that will just continue.

It's likely that those hedge fund shareholders are going to force an auction process. The price is low in a lot of people's minds. The firm declared that there was a fair process. But I don't believe there was an auction, and the activist shareholders believe there should have been.