Angela Merkel’s victory will push Europe to the right in an understated but significant way. That will not be because of any new and dramatic move on the European stage.

We should expect from her more of the same: to act cautiously, pragmatically and entirely in Germany’s interests as she has done so far — to a fault.

Work with Britain, France and the US to put pressure on Iran? Barely. Support Gordon Brown’s economic stimulus? Nope.

Afghanistan? Germany’s 4,000 troops are more active than a year ago, a tribute to the Obama magic, but the Government is still looking for the exits. Often the German Chancellor has seemed to find the clunky compromises demanded by her grand coalition of Right and Left a useful political camouflage for her own natural instinct to search for the unexceptional middle.

But her new centre-right coalition, with a stable majority, is bound to send a clearer message.

That will help the European Union, which gains little when its largest member is caught up in introspective inertia. It would be a caricature to call the policies of her new coalition conventionally “right-wing”, but the pro-business arguments do merit that label and it is to Europe’s benefit that they surface at this point in a tentative economic recovery. The muddiest and most damaging views of the new team may be towards Russia, where Germany may now be at odds with the US, and on opposition to Turkey’s membership of the EU, where it definitely will be.

A judgment on this new administration’s claims to reform will rest on the numbers — specifically, how much it decides to cut taxes. That was the loudest campaign promise of the Free Democrats. Their proposed cuts are for between €50 billion and €60 billion, spread over the four-year term. Ms Merkel agrees that something is desirable, but campaigned for only a quarter of that figure. Yet the budget will have a hole in it of about €100 billion next year, after perhaps €86 billion this year. The previous record, 13 years ago, was €40 billion.

What emerges after a messy debate will likely be only tiny cuts, if any, perhaps no more than a gesture. Nor, probably, do the Free Democrats have the impetus to push through more than a fraction of their proposed changes in business regulation. In her first term Ms Merkel has shown a taste for caution disguised by an unexpected flair for populism. That is not going to turn into drama. But a clearer message can only help after years of stolid impassivity.

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