Category Archives: Angela Merkel

The world needs grown-up leadership. Time for Germany to step up | Shada Islam

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With Germany at the EU helm, there’s a unique chance for Europe to fill the vacuum left by the retreating US

With Trump’s US missing in action from the global stage, the European Union should be stepping into the vacuum. Germany, which has just taken over the bloc’s rotating presidency, could use the next six months to provide the leadership to boost Europe’s global impact. But is it ready to shake off its traditional reticence?

Immediate economic challenges will dominate EU leaders’ first in-person encounter since the lockdown, on 17 and 18 July. And Berlin is right to prioritise agreement on the EU’s new seven-year budget and a pandemic recovery plan, a task complicated by internal rifts and new forecasts warning of an even deeper recession than expected across the 27-nation bloc. As Angela Merkel said in a recent Guardian interview: “For Europe to survive, its economy needs to survive.”

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EU leaders are split over coronavirus recovery

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This week’s emergency summit will expose national divisions over budgets and the €750bn pandemic fund

Lockdown has proved challenging for most workplaces, and the European Council is no different. All-night sessions, corridor huddles and fine dining in the glass Europa building in Brussels have been replaced with hours staring at a gallery of fellow heads of state reading out prepared lines in front of a backdrop of EU and national flags – and the odd bit of pop art, as in the case of Luxembourg’s prime minister Xavier Bettel.

But this week, leaders will be forced to switch off their laptops and make their way across recently reopened borders to Brussels for their first face-to-face meeting in five months – and it is set to be a bruising encounter.

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Angela Merkel: UK must live with consequences of weaker ties to EU

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German leader signals trade compromise less likely as she hardens tone on no-deal Brexit

The UK will have to “live with the consequences” of Boris Johnson ditching Theresa May’s plan to maintain close economic ties with the EU after Brexit, Angela Merkel has said, hardening her tone over the prospect of a no-deal scenario at the end of the year.

After more than three years in which the German chancellor repeatedly emphasised her openness to a deal that would maintain the UK’s current flows of trade with the bloc, she suggested the door leading to such a compromise had now closed.

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Merkel among winners as Europeans give verdict on anti-Covid battles

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Satisfaction levels across the continent have risen and fallen, but nowhere have they plunged as for Boris Johnson’s government

All across the continent, most Europeans now trust their leaders generally, and how they have handled the coronavirus pandemic in particular, a little less than when the crisis began – but nowhere has public confidence fallen as far and as fast as in the UK.

Even leaders seen as having managed Covid-19 the most successfully, such as Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen, have suffered slight dips in popular satisfaction as the weeks have worn on.

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Angela Merkel has become the spend, spend, spend chancellor | Larry Elliot

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With its €130bn stimulus package, Germany is showing others how to do the recovery

And in one bound she was transformed. For Angela Merkel, the days of being lampooned as the archetypal Swabian housewife keeping tight control over the purse strings are over. Now, courtesy of a €130bn (£116bn) stimulus package, she is the spend, spend, spend chancellor.

Make no mistake, much of the past criticism of Germany’s frugal approach to government spending and budget deficits was justified. Saving some money for a rainy day is one thing but running surpluses worth 8% of national output was unnecessary and harmful to the global economy.

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Trump cancels summit but says he will invite Putin to later G7 event

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US president intends to convene 11 nations at later date in push to counter China

Donald Trump has been forced to cancel a planned face-to-face summit of G7 leaders in June and now wants to host an expanded meeting in September dedicated to countering China, to which Vladimir Putin would be invited.

Trump revealed on Saturday that he had cancelled the June meeting, which he had billed as a symbol of the US “transitioning back to greatness”, after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, told him in a phone call that she saw the summit in Washington DC as a health risk. Hundreds of security staff, journalists and officials also attend the two-day summits.

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Franco-German plan for European recovery will face compromises

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Macron-Merkel plan to borrow on behalf of EU to help worst-hit countries is already being challenged by ‘frugal four’

When France and Germany announced a plan to raise €500bn (£448bn) on financial markets to fund a European coronavirus recovery plan, leaders sought to underscore the magnitude of the moment.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed “a real change of philosophy”, with the plan for the European commission to borrow money on behalf of the entire EU and issue grants to the most stricken industries and regions. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declared: “The nation state has no future standing alone,” and the German finance minister, Olaf Scholz, evoked the legacy of the US founding father Alexander Hamilton, who helped to transform the US into a true political unit with his scheme for the national government to take on debts accrued by individual states.

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Russian hacking attack on Bundestag damaged trust, says Merkel

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Chancellor says she was pained to learn outcome of inquiry pinning blame on Fancy Bear

Angela Merkel has said Russian hacking attacks on the Bundestag in which her emails were seized harmed efforts to build a trusting relationship with Moscow.

Merkel told the German parliament on Wednesday that she had been pained to learn of the 2015 hack and the perpetrator.

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Lockdown easing: have other leaders fared better than Boris Johnson?

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Guardian writers report on how various European countries have managed the process

Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised for failing to show Britain a clear route out of lockdown. Easing a nation out of two months of confinement is a complicated business, and some degree of confusion is almost inevitable. Here, Guardian correspondents look at how other European leaders have managed the process.

Spain’s lockdown exit strategy – known formally as the Plan for the Transition Towards the New Normality – was outlined by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during a televised press conference on the evening of 28 April. Sánchez said the country’s four-phase de-escalation initiative would be “gradual and asymmetric”, adding that the first stage – dubbed phase 0 – would come into effect on 4 May.

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European leaders mark war generation heroics in shadow of pandemic

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Quiet commemorations held to mark 75 years since end of war on continent

Seventy-five years ago crowds massed in the streets of Europe, singing and dancing as their leaders announced the end of six years of bloody war. Today, the streets were empty, and leaders stood alone in silence at places of commemoration, as a continent marked the heroics of the war generation in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Why do female leaders seem to be more successful at managing the coronavirus crisis?

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Plenty of countries with male leaders have also done well. But few with female leaders have done badly

On 1 April, the prime minister of Sint Maarten addressed her nation’s 41,500 people. Coronavirus cases were rising, and Silveria Jacobs knew the small island country, which welcomes 500,000 tourists a year, was at great risk: it had two ICU beds.

Jacobs did not want to impose a strict lockdown, but she did want physical distancing observed. So she spelled it out: “Simply. Stop. Moving,” she said. “If you don’t have the bread you like in your house, eat crackers. Eat cereal. Eat oats. Eat … sardines.”

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How Covid-19 poured cold water on Netherlands’ EU romance

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Dutch opposition to recovery spending has overtones of British disillusionment

Isolated in a recent European Union council of ministers, with attitudes described by European leaders past and present as “repugnant”.

It sounds like an old script of Britain in the EU. Yet it is the Netherlands that has found itself at the heart of the union’s most bitter row during the coronavirus pandemic. As EU leaders meet on Thursday for their fourth virtual crisis summit in seven weeks, the Dutch will once again be in the vanguard of opposition to plans for big spending on the recovery.

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Merkel sets out clear explanation of how coronavirus transmission works – video

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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel. has been praised for her explanation of how the coronavirus spreads and why deciding when to lift a lockdown is such a complex issue. 

Merkel, who has a doctorate in quantum chemistry, said that physical distancing measures had brought a 'fragile intermediate success' and helped 'flatten the curve', but added that these rules would remain in place until at least 3 May but some shops could reopen next week

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US’s global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump’s coronavirus response

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International relations expert warns policy failure could do lasting damage as president insults allies and undermines alliances

Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which he once dismissed as a hoax, has been fiercely criticised at home as woefully inadequate to the point of irresponsibility.

Yet also thanks largely to Trump, a parallel disaster is unfolding across the world: the ruination of America’s reputation as a safe, trustworthy, competent international leader and partner.

Call it the Trump double-whammy. Diplomatically speaking, the US is on life support.

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Eight German neo-Nazis jailed over planned attacks

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Men were part of hooligan skinhead scene in country’s former communist east

Eight members of a German neo-Nazi cell have been jailed after a court found them guilty of forming a “terrorist organisation” that was planning a campaign of violence.

The higher regional court in Dresden sentenced the accused, aged between 22 and 32, to prison terms ranging from two years and three months to five and a half years for the ringleader of the group that called itself “Revolution Chemnitz”.

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Far-right AfD faces exit from Hamburg parliament after election flop

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Exit polls suggest AfD fell below 5% threshold as voters also gave Merkel’s CDU thumbs-down

Four days after a racist gun attack in the German town of Hanau killed 10 people, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) were set to be ejected from the Hamburg parliament in a state election on Sunday.

Exit polls indicated that AfD would fall just short of the 5% threshold. “Nazis out,” shouted supporters of the victorious Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens as they celebrated in the northern city.

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Hanau attack reveals ‘poison’ of racism in Germany, says Merkel

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Gunman who posted manifesto online kills nine at shisha bars before shooting himself

Angela Merkel has said the murder of nine people in a shooting rampage by a suspected rightwing extremist has revealed the “poison” of racism and hate in Germany.

The man, identified as Tobias Rathjen, 43, carried out attacks at two shisha bars in Hanau, a commuter town near Frankfurt, before killing his mother, bringing the death toll to 10, and then himself, police said.

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Germany attack: gunman acted on rightwing, racist motives, says Merkel – video

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Chancellor says the circumstances of the attacks in Hanau need to be fully investigated but the shootings have exposed the ‘poison’ of racism in German society. She pledges to stand up against those who ‘seek to divide the country’. Nine people were killed when a gunman opened fire at two shisha bars. He then killed his mother and himself at home, police say

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Germany: senior CDU figure announces surprise leadership candidacy

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Norbert Röttgen throws hat in ring to replace Merkel after Kramp-Karrenbauer steps aside

A senior German conservative politician, who was once seen as the brains behind Angela Merkel’s inner circle but was later sacked by the chancellor, has put himself forward as a surprise candidate to take over as leader of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU), further complicating the party’s chaotic succession planning.

Norbert Röttgen announced his candidacy for the soon-to-be vacant seat at the top of the CDU in a press conference on Tuesday, saying he had decided to run because he believed the party should strategically position itself as the “party of the centre”.

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Fears grow that CDU crisis in Germany could spread across EU

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Pressure mounts on Angela Merkel’s party to find new leader after AKK resignation

Pressure is growing on Angela Merkel’s troubled Christian Democratic Union to speed up the process of finding a new leader, amid warnings from senior party members that paralysis within the party could spread across the EU when Germany assumes the rotating presidency of the council of the European Union in the second half of the year.

The German centre-right has been in turmoil since Merkel’s designated successor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned after CDU politicians in the eastern state of Thuringia defied instructions not to side with the far right in a state election.

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