Angela Merkel: mutti | Opinion

From Paris

The era of German Chancellor Angela Merkel ends this Sunday, September 26, after four successive terms (2005-2021) during which the German political leader shook her country and Europe with decisions which crossed the arc of strictly liberal policies and led in recent years to a surprising renunciation of what had been the his party’s credo. Merkel applied the realism of rationality with the same efficiency with which magical realism crosses certain periods of Latin American literature. Angela Merkel does not leave a balance sheet but a paradoxical political work and an image summarized in the nickname with which she is known in Europe: “Mutti” (Mom)

Pandemic

Those who idolize or deny her will miss out on the strength of her apparent modesty and the intelligence and political expediency of her changes of direction. No other European leader has been in power for so long and no one has been hit by as many crises as she has. The leader of the first economic power in Europe (the fourth in the world) has had a changing career. From front to back, Angela Merkel has turned the destinies of Europe upside down. Its last boost dates back to March 18, 2020 when, amid pandemic storm, French President Emmanuel Macron and Merkel together presented an economic stimulus package worth € 500 billion to “help the most affected sectors and regions”. There was the seed of debt pooling. Although the Chancellor said this principle was to be an “exceptional” tool, with this plan one of the pillars of German debt philosophy was shattered. Berlin has accepted that its sacrosanct budgetary discipline be put aside and that, therefore, the aid will be financed by the debt issued by the European Commission.

equality marriage

All the lights and shadows of his tenure come to the fore in 2017, when same-sex marriage was adopted in Germany. Without her it would not have been possible, and with her it was, although the Chancellor herself voted against. Merkel removed the lock that blocked the adoption of marriage for all when he chose not to ask for party discipline and to let each deputy vote in the Bundestag “according to his conscience”. Merkel, for 12 years, refused to legislate on this issue, but in 2017, with federal elections on the verge of her third term, she gave in to the unstoppable rationality of political expediency. At a ceremony in a Berlin theater, Merkel admitted she was forced to “reflect” on her rejection of same-sex union. His decision would in fact amount to an electoral “calibration”. Three candidate parties to form a future government had warned that they would only negotiate a possible alliance if the legalization of equal marriage was included in the future government program.

Libya

Without doubt, his most spectacular gesture, the one that will leave traces in German and European history, dates back to 2013, 2014 and 2015. These three dates converge on the same night: September 4, 2015. Europe lived in this time the refugee crisis caused by the irresponsibility of the former French president Nicolas sarkozy, who offered to promote, with the support of the United States, Great Britain, the UN and NATO, the overthrow of former Libyan President Muhammar KhadafI. The fall of the Libyan head of state triggered the largest forced displacement of people in Europe since World War II. This September 4, 2015 Merkel said that “anyone who flees their country because they are persecuted or in danger has the right to seek asylum. Whether we like it or not, we have a duty to respond because it is article number one of our fundamental law ”. Between 2014 and 2017, Germany took in more than 1.5 million asylum seekers, one million of whom remained in the country. This policy of openness was part of a movement totally contrary to the European pettiness of those years.. Merkel forced her partners to fix positions and open their borders. Benevolence, compassion, opportunism, generational calculation (payment of pensions)? All interpretations are possible. The truth is that when all of Europe hid its responsibilities in the face of a humanitarian tragedy caused by the West, Merkel took a position that was as risky and human as it was unheard of. The counterpart would come later, not only with the electoral push from the German far right and the neo-Nazis, both opposed to foreigners. Berlin was then one of the countries that crafted the border outsourcing deals because of which Turkey, Libya and even Morocco have become prison gallows where migrants go that Europe rejects.

Green economy

In 2029, Merkel also launched an ambitious transition to the green economy. The roughly 40 billion euro plan was halfway but This has earned her the nickname “Green Chancellor” or “Climate Chancellor” due to her broad ecological profile.: The German Chancellor has decreed the closure of nuclear power plants, activated a historic energy transition and has never wavered in the face of the climate denial of the former president Donald trump. The euro crisis in 2010, the migrant tragedy in 2015 and the pandemic have placed Angela Merkel in front of gigantic challenges to which she has not always responded according to the liberal conservative line of her party. Angela Merkel has not changed Europe as has been said so many times, nor has she balanced the contrasts between East Germany and West Germany. The regions of the former GDR (German Democratic Republic) do not yet participate in the economic growth and equal pay that prevail in West Germany. Merkel, during the euro crisis (2010), was not as human as described. He imposed budgetary sacrifices on Greece and the countries of southern Europe that were counterproductive for these companies.

Merkel method

However, its methodology has already entered universities as the “Merkel Method” whose backbone is to reach consensus through pragmatism and enter the scene in unexpected ways. This is how he came out of the shadows. In 1999, Merkel was a young political leader with no influence or greater prestige within the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The party was in the midst of a crisis after losing the elections the previous year. In turn, the former chancellor Helmut Kohl he was plunged into a gigantic scandal derived from the irregular funding of the CDU. Kohl He was the grandfather, the architect of the reunification of the two Germanies, and Merkel a distant niece he had previously appointed Minister of Women and Youth and then of the Environment and Nuclear Safety. However, the young leader achieved a real political parricide when, that year, he published an article in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAE) where he assured Kohl “had hurt the party” and asked for his relief. He was born there like a star and has continued to shine until today. Angela Merkel had one constant virtue: to put aside ideological beliefs when necessary, especially if they lead to the destruction of society. She has not ceased to be a liberal conservative, but she has been able to put the great ideological precepts in the drawer whenever history accelerates its course.