Are German elites secretly maneuvering Europe to political union?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Let's say there is some sort of presidential voting system across Europe. If you setup the system so that the winner is whomever wins the popular vote, and assuming each country never has more than one candidate for president, isn't it safe to bet that the presidential candidate from the nation in Europe with the largest population (i.e., Germany) would almost surely win a presidential election across Europe each and every time? I mean, I find it hard to believe Germans are going to vote for the French candidate and the French are going to vote for the German candidate. This would be quite the absurd experiment to top the Euro. That this sort of thing is even being taken remotely serious just makes me wonder how messed up the EU REALLY is right now, and how bad it is going to get (and what kind of mad politicians will emerge from the ruins)

I guarantee the British would never agree to such nonsense.

Most likely, there would be a EPP and a PES candidate (and maybe a couple of others) and not 27 national ones.

Last time around the European Council didn't pick a German for president, but a EPP member, so that the political majorities of the Council were properly represented. (Of course, Von Rompuy was also picked because he isn't someone who would stand in the way of German/French interests.)

Question is whether a popular election would lead to similar results... with the most "inoffensive" candidate winning.

[Middle-aged Europe]

In fact it's a important element in why Merkel has gotten a lot of internal criticism in CDU, because she haven't been active enough in seeking close integration as a tool to deal with the crisis.

Most criticism from the ranks of the CDU (and FDP) I'm aware of is the one regarding Merkel's support for EFSF and ESM. They think there's too much integration.

SPD and Greens tend to criticize Merkel's opposition to Eurobonds though. Well, Günter Oettinger too now, which is in fact a rare example of Merkel being criticized by a CDUer for not doing enough (rather than doing "too much").

Anything that has to do with the EU seems to be rather unpopular in Germany right now. Public sentiment is that either Greece and Italy should be kicked out or that Germany should withdraw on its own. And the Euro should be scrapped anyway.    Luckily for Merkel, there isn't really a anti-European force in Germany right now. Except for the Left Party maybe, but they are occupied with their own problems (and never-ending infightings). The FDP tried to pull something of an ad hoc anti-Euro campaign in the Berlin state election, which failed miserably because nobody believes the FDP anymore no matter what they say. The FDP's short-lived anti-Euro campaign came across as totally fake and desperate, more than anything else.

[Middle-aged Europe]

First of all, the idea that Merkel and Schüble deliberately engineered this crisis is highly amusing. These people are far too clueless in order to come up with something sinister like this.

Merkel is usually attacked by the opposition parties for not doing enough and by dissidenters from CDU/FDP for doing way too much. All she tries to do is to stay on the middle ground because that's what kept her in power all these years and she doesn't really have an idea what else to do anyway.

As for Schäuble, he's probably an old-school pro-European-no-matter-what CDU politician. One of the last ones of that generation who's still in public office in fact. Born in 1942, he was raised with idea that only a strong united Europe will prevent another WWI/WWII-type event on the continent. Being more than ten years younger and having grown up in East Germany, Merkel is certainly more pragmatic than that.