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Angela
Merkel’s soft offensive
Fourth
and final term would focus on securing her place in history — by
‘fixing’ Europe.
By
Matthew Karnitschnig
9/1/16, 5:24 AM CET
BERLIN — Berlin’s
government quarter was hot with speculation this week about the
“K-Frage,” a long-running political parlor game over whether
Angela Merkel will pursue another run for Germany’s chancellery.
Though few seriously
doubt Merkel wants a chance at an era-crowning fourth term as
Kanzlerin, behind-the-scenes squabbling in her conservative alliance
over the timing of an announcement has fed theories of a Plan B.
Even as her allies
and adversaries parse her public statements and body language for
clues of her plans, Merkel has quietly begun laying the groundwork
for another four-year term, her political allies say. A familiar
question is already dominating those deliberations: How to fix
Europe?
If Merkel has spent
most of her time in office putting out fires across the Continent,
from the financial crisis and Greece to the refugee influx, her next
and likely final term would focus on a subject close to any longtime
leader’s heart — legacy. Securing that place in history will
depend in large part on whether Merkel succeeds in putting Europe on
steadier ground.
“Time is not
on the side of integration but of regression” — Josef Janning,
ECFR
A combination of
economic weakness and the widespread impression that Brussels and/or
Berlin are to blame for national ills has eroded confidence in the
bloc, fueling populist movements from Spain to Sweden. If the EU
continues to unravel in the coming years, Merkel, the Continent’s
preeminent political figure, will be remembered as the leader who
lost Europe.
While Berlin
believes Europe has made strides in improving its regulatory
framework and preparing for shocks like the debt crisis, Merkel’s
camp also acknowledges that much more needs to be done to restore
trust in the EU. Brexit, they say, could be the catalyst to turn the
tide.
“In Berlin people
realize it’s important to seize the moment because it may not come
back,” said Josef Janning, head of the European Council on Foreign
Relations in Berlin. “Time is not on the side of integration but of
regression.”
That Merkel
recognizes she has a limited time frame for action was evident last
week when she met 15 national European leaders in an effort to begin
building consensus in key areas. The shuttle diplomacy, which took
the chancellor from the deck of an Italian aircraft carrier to Tallin
and points between, was partly a confidence building exercise ahead
of this month’s informal summit in Bratislava. Her message: Berlin
listens.
Wild ones
A common complaint
among Europe’s smaller members is that large countries, led by
Berlin, bigfoot them in the EU decision-making process. That fear has
strengthened the various regional blocs within the EU, such as
Scandanavia, the Baltics or the so-called Visegrád group of Central
European states.
Indeed, it was a
common rejection of Merkel’s refugee policy that led to the
often-fractious Visegrád group’s recent renaissance.
In Germany, Merkel’s
swing through Eastern Europe was widely seen as a failure because she
didn’t convince countries to accept any refugees. Yet that was
never her plan. Recognizing that countries like Poland and Hungary
wouldn’t back down, the German leader focused the talks on areas of
common ground, in particular how to improve security with more
intelligence sharing, securing the EU’s borders and preserving the
bloc’s refugee pact with Turkey.
Another area of
agreement: Brexit. Like Germany, Eastern European countries have
little interest in pursuing a punitive approach with the U.K. during
the Brexit talks and reject calls from France and other western
countries for a hard line. While Berlin wants to safeguard the
massive investments German companies such as Siemens and BMW have
made in the U.K., Eastern European states like Poland and Romania
want to protect the status of their citizens there and the
remittances they send home.
“Merkel’s aim
here was to repair Berlin’s ties with Eastern Europe that have been
strained by the refugee crisis,” said Joerg Forbrig, an analyst
with the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin. “That’s
important for the atmosphere within the EU.”
With the U.K.
essentially out of the EU decision-making, she will try to build
broader coalitions on important questions.
Merkel’s
diplomatic offensive was also a sign that with the U.K. essentially
out of the EU decision-making, she will try to build broader
coalitions on important questions. She no longer believes Germany and
France, even together with Italy which has joined their recent
meetings, can act as a motor for the EU, analysts say. In addition to
the loss of economic muscle in both France and Italy in recent years,
Merkel’s position in key areas, in particular economic and fiscal
policy, is often far removed from those in Paris and Rome.
For Merkel, meetings
between the three are as much as about reining in French and Italian
hopes for freer spending as they are about setting the EU’s agenda.
“She’s not
trying to win them over to her course but trying to prevent them from
running wild,” Janning said.
For the German
leader, the Bratislava summit marks the start of what promises to the
arduous task of restoring confidence in an EU plagued by weak
leadership and competing national agendas. While even her critics say
she is the only leader with the stature to tackle the bloc’s
catalog of ills, they also complain that Germany’s political and
economic dominance is at the root of many of the EU’s problems.
Even with the clock
ticking, Merkel — ever the physicist — insists Europe study the
problem before taking action.
“What we need to
do is take stock of where we are,” she said this week in an
interview the German television. “Instead of rushing into action,
one should calmly deliberate.”
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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Merkel:
'Germany will remain Germany'
Published: 31 Aug
2016 11:44 GMT+02:00
One year after
Angela Merkel first declared "we can do this," leading to a
huge uptick in refugees applying for asylum, the Chancellor reflected
this week on her policies and the future of Germany.
In an interview with
Süddeutsche Zeitung published online on Tuesday, Merkel seemed as
resolute as ever about the decision to take in hundreds of thousands
of refugees from war-torn countries.
When she first
uttered her now often repeated - and mocked - mantra of “we can do
this” one year ago, she said she never expected those few words to
make such an impact.
“If you asked me
before if I would introduce a distinctive phrase that would be quoted
many times over, I would not have thought of this phrase.”
At the same time,
she said that she used the phrase with “deep conviction… and with
the awareness that we were dealing with a difficult and big task.”
Merkel said that it was clear there were many hurdles and fears that
she needed to dismantle.
Merkel also pointed
out that Germany has not always been as proactive as it could be in
helping refugees in the not so distant past. She said that after
Germany took in a record number of refugees in the early 1990s from
former Yugoslavia, the country was hesitant to do the same in the
years that followed.
“We in Germany
have also long ignored the problem,” the Chancellor said.
“In 2004 and 2005,
many refugees came and we let Spain and others at the outer borders
deal with it.
“After having
taken in so many refugees during the Yugoslavian war, Germany was
happy that it was now dealing with other priorities.”
Merkel has also
recently faced a drop in approval ratings following several violent
attacks in July that involved perpetrators who had sought asylum in
Germany. In Würzburg, a 17-year-old Afghan refugee attacked a family
on a train with an axe. Within the same week, a Syrian man blew
himself up in Ansbach, injuring a dozen others.
German media later
reported that both had been in contact with members of Isis.
The Chancellor said
that it was “completely understandable” that there has been
“unease and concern” following the attacks.
She said it showed
that, among refugees there are some who did not arrive with pure
intentions. This makes integration a huge challenge, she added.
But she also
continued to reject the notion that there was a direct connection
between terrorism and having so many refugees in the country.
“It is simply
false that terrorism only first came here through refugees. It was
already here, especially with the suspected terrorists that we have
been monitoring.”
She maintained as
well that the hundreds of thousands of refugees remaining in Germany
would not change the character of the country.
“Germany will
remain Germany, with all that we love and hold dear.”
The country has
always undergone change since its inception, Merkel said, but she
would not let Germany lose the values and principles that make it
attractive.
"These are
reflected in our liberality, our democracy, our constitutional state,
and in our overwhelming commitment to a social market economy,
through which our economic strength can absorb those who are
weakest."
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