For sure she was more popular than the party CDU and this has been proven by the recent election results. The last few weeks also show that the CDU would miss her the most. During her term, she moved the centre-right CDU more to the centre borrowing policies from the SPD and thereby squeezing the SPD between the centre CDU and the Greens on the left of the centre and the Die Linke further towards the left. She was able to attract centrist voters to vote for CDU who would not have otherwise voted for the CDU.
As she leaves the centre stage, she still remains hugely popular not only in Germany but also in the whole of Europe and many attribute the stability of Germany and the EU mainly to her. One trait she has earned throughout her time was that she could be trusted.
There is a lot of talk of how things would get through in the post Merkel era and rightly so. 16 years as the leader of the biggest economy is going to end soon. The oldest leader in the EU Council is going to leave. The Merkel era is known for stability, for getting through difficult times, for managing conflicts within the EU Council and her personalised stamp of minimalist developments defined the era.
During her term she avoided dramatic shifts. Her style of functioning was incremental shifts and often settling for the lowest common denominator. This had both admirers and detractors. The admirers felt that she was inclusive, and was not disruptive and could sell the incremental changes to their populace but the detractors felt settling for lowest common denominator showed her insecurity, risk-averse approach, lack of ambition, lack of the big picture.
The selection of the Commission Presidents, EEAS Secretary Generals, Council Presidents and other important posts were not given to candidates who were the best possible ones because they were strong personalities and could dominate the member states. She went with the lowest common denominator always – someone agreeable to all, who would be subservient to the member states. She never looked for someone incredibly capable and tried to push that person ahead. She lacked leadership. She always gilded along. She never took tough decision except for allowing the migrants in 2015. Radical and courageous measures are needed in certain areas to face the current geopolitical challenges. What we need is a courageous and visionary leader. Her mission seems to be to preserve the unity of the union, bridge internal divides, reconcile divergent positions and thereby protect the EU’s cohesion.
An ECFR survey has emphasised that the Merkel era has stabilised enough and earned respect and trust across the EU for the new leader to be dynamic and visionary to lead the EU ahead facing the current challenges.
It is true that wanting to bring everyone on board and to make EU cohesion an absolute priority is that it limits one’s ability to act.
The Merkel government’s support for austerity during the Eurozone crisis and obsession with public debt and Germany’s huge trade surplus have drawn more criticism than any other policies.
Her achievements were initiating the Lisbon Treaty in 2007 and getting it done within few years of the twin referendum defeat. Germany took the leadership in getting through the financial crisis and banking crisis. The 2015 migration crisis was the one time she really stood for her own principle and the personal side of hers, which is rarely known outside, was revealed. She came up with the term ‘Wir schaffen das’.
Her role was mixed when it came to bailing out the PIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) especially Greece. Although the crisis was averted, the austerity measures imposed severely dented the Greece economy and its social fabric and were not regarded as the right kind of policy mix by many. Later the IMF reviews themselves criticised the overtly austere focus of the Greece program.
Her tight balancing of the China policy with trade relationship and foreign policy were appreciated in the beginning but as China became more muscular in its foreign policy, Germany failed to adapt to that change and has increasingly allowed its trade policy to dominate foreign policy.
Her EU policy were lacking dynamism, fresh ideas, long term vision.
One of the major failures was no initiative towards the Balkans enlargement. The last 16 years haven’t seen any improvement in Balkans enlargement prospects or in their economies. Germany usually a strong enlargement advocate showed almost no leadership and focus towards the Balkans despite frequent rhetoric of the importance of the Balkans to the EU, the future of the Balkans is in the EU and increasing trade relationship. There was not much movement on Serbia – Kosovo relationship either.
The Middle East was also a failure on her part. The EU with no hard power, should have used its enormous soft power sufficiently to engage and rebuild Libya, Egypt and Tunisia but either failed badly or was half hearted. Without the US support, which it is used to falling back on, it failed to take decisions and act independently wherever possible. Germany as the biggest power lacked vision and leadership.
Nordstream II was another avoidable bad policy. To reduce the cost burden of shifting from nuclear energy and coal power, she had opted for cheaper gas with the Nordstream II project but it was a costly strategic mistake.
Her handling of Cameron and Brexit, were not too great either. From the time when David Cameron got elected in 2010, he turned UK to be a Eurosceptic country after 13 years of pro-EU Labour government, which actively engaged in EU affairs. Merkel never questioned Cameron’s anti EU turns nor disputed all the lies that he was propagating about the EU in London. Of course there were reforms that the EU needs to have undertaken but those were not mentioned in the reforms that Cameron prescribed to the EU that were needed for the UK to remain in the EU. Merkel instead of engaging critically with Cameron’s request, went ahead largely unquestioned with his plea and allowed him a lot more space than he deserved or put crudely she fell for his blackmails.
The worst of her foreign policies was the Russia policy. It was miserable to say the least. She never got the Russia policy right despite exposed to Russia’s behaviour from her childhood. With that single failure, she also failed to get due respect from Poland and the Baltic countries. The EU Russia policy led by her and the French Presidents were always late to react on serious violations from the Russia side and when they reacted, it was disproportionately less to the issue in hand. Putin knew that the EU was spineless, would not react, got bolder and bolder and acted with little impunity and didn’t take the EU seriously enough. It was a misplaced idea when in August 2021 she and Macron called for EU leaders summit meeting with Russia similar to the one Biden had with Russia saying that the EU shouldn’t be left out. The Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda rightly said “Russia respected the US because it is a strategic nuclear power and the EU is not and the EU stands for principles and values. Russia doesn’t respect principles and values and it only values hard power”. His fellow Baltic country leaders Latvia and Estonia also mentioned that there has been no movement forward in the Donbass region and Crimea and that just recently the Russians insulted the EU HR. Rutte was the one who said it bluntly and boldly that he wouldn’t want to be in the same room as Putin is. That should be the stand of the EU. Merkel later said that she would have preferred a bolder approach but that only shows that she has not learnt any lessons. She and Macron claim that they would need to engage with Russia in Syria, Libya, Africa and Middle East. Even when they were engaging with them what have they achieved? Absolutely nothing. It has been going on a down spiral since Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. Russia made EU’s problems worse in Syria by aligning and helping with arms and ammunitions with the very despot that the EU was fighting against and trying to throw out.
Her lack of engagement to prevent the rule of law crisis from getting out of control is one of her greatest failures. She was not at the forefront of efforts to protect democracy and the rule of law and she allowed getting worse when she had the opportunity to engage much earlier. On the contrary, she may even have helped Orban consolidate power. She could have acted before it was too late. Orban started his illiberal policies already in 2012. That time it was only Hungary, which was deviating from the EU values. But none of the EU leaders did anything significant to deter him. Merkel could have used her powers. Instead she only acted as a temporary problem solver. When Poland also joined Hungary’s illiberal policies, it was difficult for the EU Council and other EU institutions to handle both the countries as both supported each other. Only in the last few years Article 7 procedures has been started against both these countries. During this time, Merkel hardly took a hard stand on Hungary and she almost always went soft on Hungary not to make her fellow EPP leader more distant from cooperating with the others on other issues. Some EU diplomats think that Merkel would be missed, as she was the only one capable of playing the role of a mediator between Hungary and other conflicting parties. This shows that she has been only prolonging the problems that the EU has had by not taking a strong stand against the single most problematic country Hungary. Orban saw this strategy as a sign of weakness and exploited it accordingly. With these autocrats pushing the rule-of-law crisis of the European project to the extreme, Merkel’s conflict averse approach is ineffective and allows it to worsen. Attempting to please both sides of the divide is detrimental to the European project. This is the legacy she is leaving behind in her EU policy arena.
I would expect the incoming German chancellor to be more or less the same as Merkel. The possible chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz would to a larger degree follow similar policies as Merkel did. As expected by a large proportion of people, if a possible traffic-light coalition government takes office, they would make a considerable difference to the Merkel legacy mainly because of his coalition partners the Greens and the FDP. Although both these parties have very opposite views on certain policy agendas, both importantly come up with fresh ideas and are forward looking how much ever they differed from each other. It would be interesting to see the new government’s Russia policy as Scholz of the SPD would be even friendlier towards Russia as SPD are generally pro-Russia. But I would expect their coalition partners FDP and the Green party (and potentially the foreign minister would be from the Green party) to balance that soft approach by a much more hard-line policy towards Russia and China. In dealing with the rule-of-law crisis, reinvigorating the EU and in making the EU play a strong role globally, the expectation is that the new government would be much more ambitious and forthcoming. Better times are ahead!
theeveroptimist 