It was one of the most dramatic and radical policy reversals in European Union history. In less than 48 hours, Germany not only executed a seismic shift in its domestic budget policy but also suddenly pushed to rewrite the EU’s fiscal rules it itself helped to draft.

Brussels welcomed the first move as a long-overdue response to years of urging Germany to invest more, rather than let itself be constrained by a constitutional limit on borrowing.

But the second? That was seen as a unilateral move — an overcorrection that unsettled even Germany’s closest allies.