Category Archives: Angela Merkel

Merz’s all-male team photo revives question of gender equality in Germany

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Image posted on social media rekindles idea that prospective new chancellor has a Frauenproblem

Six beaming election winners huddled around a table and not a woman among them: a viral social media image of the man likely to be Germany’s next chancellor and his transition team has revived longstanding questions about whether Friedrich Merz can bridge a persistent gender gap.

“Not great optics” was among the more generous of the thousands of comments on the post by Merz’s Bavarian ally Markus Söder, which seemed to hark back to another time.

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Willingness to ease off ‘debt brake’ may decide the German election

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Rule dating from 2009 that limits borrowing looks vulnerable as main political parties promise to revive stalled economy

Germany is used to running its economy with the brake on. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis Berlin has sought to burnish a reputation as the world capital of fiscal discipline, with a near-pious aversion to debt and pride in strong government finances.

Under a rule known as the “debt brake” – introduced in 2009 by Angela Merkel to show Germany was committed to balancing the books after the banking crash – the federal government is required to limit annual borrowing to 0.35% of GDP.

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Angela Merkel rebukes CDU leader for alliance with far-right on immigration

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Ex-chancellor makes rare intervention to criticise her own party for passing asylum policy with support of AfD

The former German chancellor Angela Merkel has criticised Friedrich Merz, her eventual successor as leader of the country’s conservatives, for pushing through proposals on migration and asylum with the backing of the far-right AfD party.

In a rare intervention in public affairs since stepping down from politics in December 2021, Merkel said Merz, who is tipped to become Germany’s next chancellor, had in effect performed a U-turn.

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Angela Merkel ‘tormented’ by Brexit vote and saw it as ‘humiliation’ for EU

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Former German chancellor’s book tells how she tried to help David Cameron win over Britain’s Eurosceptics

Angela Merkel has said she was “tormented” over the result of the Brexit referendum and viewed it as a “humiliation, a disgrace” for the EU that Britain was leaving.

In her autobiography, Freedom, due to be published on Tuesday, the former German chancellor says she was dismayed by the notion that she might have done more to help the then British prime minister, David Cameron, who was keen for the UK to stay in the EU, but that ultimately, she concluded, he only had himself to blame.

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Angela Merkel expresses ‘huge concern’ at Elon Musk’s US government role

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Former German chancellor says politics should govern the social balance between powerful and ordinary citizens

Angela Merkel, who in her new memoir raises fears for the western democratic order with Donald Trump as US president, has also expressed deep concerns about the outsized role to be played in Trump’s administration by Elon Musk.

The former German chancellor, who during Trump’s first term was given by some observers the designation of “leader of the free world” usually reserved for US presidents, said 16 years in power had taught her that business and political interests must be kept in fine balance.

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Clashes over budget could push Germany’s ailing coalition to collapse

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With contradictory proposals unlikely to mesh, leaders to decide whether there is scope for alliance to continue

When, in 2021, Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats went into a “traffic light” coalition with the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats, the new government was riding high on an enthusiastic spirit of cooperation.

There were promises to modernise, reinvigorate and green-proof Europe’s largest economy. Germany, the coalition partners said, had sleep-walked into a complacent state during 16 years of rule under Angela Merkel. The new trio in power would jolt the country out of its hubris, and deliver it into a new era of vigour and creative transformation. That, at least, was the idea.

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Anti-immigration mood sweeping EU threatens its new asylum strategy

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The bloc’s migration pact, finally agreed after a decade of talks, is already in peril as states outdo each other in efforts to get tough

In 2015, when more than 1.3 million people headed to Europe, mostly fleeing a brutal war in Syria, the response of Germany’s then chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to say “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”), and open the country’s borders.

Less than a decade later, and faced with a flow of irregular arrivals less than 10% of what it was at the peak of the bloc’s migration crisis, EU capitals are increasingly saying, “No, we can’t”. Or, perhaps more accurately, “We won’t”.

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Angela Merkel chooses privacy over publicity as she celebrates turning 70

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Once seen as the world’s most powerful woman, the former German chancellor is now immersed in the arts – and not only as an admirer

At the peak of her career, she was hailed as the world’s most powerful woman and the de-facto leader of the EU.

But as Angela Merkel turns 70 today, there will be no gathering of dignitaries to pay tribute to her legacy. Instead, she will celebrate entering her eighth decade “in private”, a spokesperson for her office told the German news agency dpa.

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Angela Merkel memoirs to be published in November

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Freedom: Memories 1954-2021 will cover Merkel’s childhood, political rise and 16 years as German chancellor

Angela Merkel will release her long-awaited memoirs in November under the title Freedom: Memories 1954-2021, sketching her journey from life behind the Berlin Wall to the top echelons of power “more intimately than ever before”.

Merkel, whose image in Germany and abroad has been tarnished by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, will turn 70 in July. She notes that her life can be neatly cleaved into experiences in “two German states – 35 years in the German Democratic Republic, 35 years in reunited Germany”, according to the book’s English publisher, Pan Macmillan.

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Angela Merkel to receive Germany’s top order of merit despite criticism of legacy

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Former leader to be only third chancellor to be given Großkreuz, as her energy policy in particular comes under sharp scrutiny

Germany’s former leader Angela Merkel is to be awarded the country’s highest order of merit despite criticism over her legacy.

Merkel will be presented with the honour by the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Berlin on Monday evening in recognition of her contribution to German political life at an event to be attended by her political allies, including the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the former national football coach Jürgen Klinsmann and family and friends.

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‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

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Mathias Döpfner’s reported comments on climate, Muslims and east Germany – and his apparent political manoeuvring – create shock waves

The German CEO of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.

The internal chats, emails and text messages published by the German weekly Die Zeit on Wednesday clash with the public presentation of Axel Springer SE’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who recently said he wanted to bring “non-partisan” journalism to a too-polarised US media landscape through his acquisition of the English-language title Politico.

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Angela Merkel says she lost influence over Putin as a lame duck leader

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Germany’s former chancellor defends her actions amid barrage of accusations since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Angela Merkel has insisted that her position as a lame duck in the last months of her time in office made it more or less impossible for her to influence the behaviour of Vladimir Putin.

The former German chancellor appeared both defensive and quietly defiant about her inability to change the course of the Russian president’s decision-making in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in February.

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No regrets over handling of Vladimir Putin, says Angela Merkel

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Former German chancellor claims her opposition to Ukraine’s Nato membership helped country

Angela Merkel has said she feels no regrets for her handling of Vladimir Putin during her time in power, arguing that Russia’s president would have perceived a 2008 Nato membership plan for Ukraine that was blocked by her government as a “declaration of war”.

The former German chancellor also claimed that an oligarch-run and democratically immature Ukraine would have been less prepared for an invasion then than it is now.

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After 16 years at the top of German politics, what now for Angela Merkel?

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While Merkel has said she has no particular plans, doing nothing doesn’t seem a realistic prospect for the outgoing chancellor

After 16 years of gruelling European summits, late-light coalition negotiations and back-to-back conference calls with heads of state, Angela Merkel has vowed to spend the foreseeable future kicking back her flat black shoes and reading a few good books.

But newly emerged details of a new office in central Berlin and veiled hints in interviews suggests the world may not have seen the last of Germany’s outgoing chancellor yet.

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Olaf Scholz to be voted in as German chancellor as Merkel era ends

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Scholz to lead coalition government after agreement was signed by party leaders on Tuesday

Olaf Scholz is to be voted in as chancellor by the Bundestag on Wednesday, opening a new chapter in German and European politics as the Merkel era comes to an end.

Scholz, the outgoing deputy chancellor and finance minister, will lead a government composed of his Social Democrat party, the business-friendly Free Democrats and the Greens, a coalition of parties never tried before at the federal level in Germany.

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Germany could make Covid vaccination mandatory, says Merkel

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Outgoing chancellor also announces lockdown measures for unvaccinated and says ‘act of national solidarity’ required

Vaccination could become mandatory in Germany from February, Angela Merkel has said, as she announced what her successor as chancellor, Olaf Scholz, described as “a lockdown of the unvaccinated”.

As more EU countries confirmed cases of the Omicron variant, which the bloc’s health agency said could make up more than half of all infections on the continent within months, Merkel described the situation as “very serious”.

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‘Long reigns often leave long shadows’: Europeans on Angela Merkel

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People across Europe share their views on German chancellor and role she has played in the EU

After 16 years in office, Angela Merkel is stepping down on Thursday as chancellor of Germany. The former UK prime minister Tony Blair said she had “often defined modern Germany” and Romano Prodi, Italian prime minister between 2006 and 2008, said a new European strategy and the next-generation EU would be part of the “great legacy” she leaves.

People across Europe share their views on her leadership in Germany and the role she has played in the European Union.

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A new German era dawns, but collisions lie in wait for coalition

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The ‘traffic light’ parties all want progress but have different ideas about what that means on business and green issues

In Unterleuten, a bestselling novel by the German novelist Juli Zeh, the inhabitants of a village outside Berlin are shocked to find out that a plot of land on their doorstep has been earmarked for a gigantic wind farm.

One of the characters, a birdwatcher called Gerhard Fliess, knows what to do: he calls an old friend at the local environment ministry to remind him that the countryside around Unterleuten is the habitat of an endangered species of sandpiper. Surely that will halt the bulldozers.

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Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe

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Leader acknowledges it was ‘absolutely possible’ his army had a part in creating migrant crisis at Polish border

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.

In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.

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