Former German chancellor Angela Merkel was still one of the world’s most popular politicians when she retired in 2021, but critics are increasingly questioning her legacy ahead of the release of her memoirs.
Freedom, co-written by Merkel and her longtime political adviser Beate Baumann, is to be published in 30 languages on Tuesday next week just as Germany grapples with a deep political crisis ahead of snap elections in February next year.
The contents of the 736-page book have been a closely guarded secret, but are expected to shed new light on the four terms in office from 2005 to 2021, during which she was the world’s most powerful woman.
Photo: AFP
However, with Europe’s biggest economy in disarray since she left office, critics have already rounded on Merkel ahead of the publication date.
In a book titled The Illusion, Eckart Lohse, a journalist for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, said Merkel, 70, had “left behind a country full of unfinished business.”
In another stinging analysis, The Economist recently commented that “16 years of no reforms are taking a toll on Germany and Europe.”
Comments like these show how much public opinion has turned on Merkel since 2021, when her image was still “very positive overall,” researcher Marie Krpata said.
In an interview with the Tagesspiegel newspaper, political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder said two major things have shifted the landscape in Germany since Merkel retired: the war in Ukraine and “the collapse of the export-oriented economic model.”
As a result, Germany, long a driver of European growth, was the world’s only major advanced economy to shrink last year and is expected to contract again this year, by 0.2 percent.
Germany is also increasingly suffering from “dilapidated infrastructure ... in the transport sector, such as railways, but also in the digital sector, schools and kindergartens”, Krpata said.
While the Merkel era was marked by stability — much prized among German voters — according to her critics this often turned into stasis.
It is not for nothing that Merkel inadvertently coined the term “merkeln” — to put off a decision for as long as possible.
On foreign policy, The Economist said Merkel had “left the country with a now-famous trifecta of dangerous dependencies: unable to defend itself without America, struggling to grow without exporting to China, relying on Russian gas to keep its industry going.”
Specifically, Merkel’s government backed the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a decision now widely regarded as a mistake in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, this decision was “in line with the expectations of the German business community, which were strongly expressed at the time,” said Norbert Lammert, a former lawmaker for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.
Public opinion was also an important factor in other controversial decisions made by Merkel, Lammert said — such as weaning Germany off nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
It was also the main driver behind her decision to leave Germany’s doors open to hundreds of thousands of migrants in 2015.
Merkel always “did pretty much exactly what the majority expected of her,” Lammert said.
The huge influx of migrants in 2015 helped fuel the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which entered parliament for the first time two years later.
The AfD is now polling in second place ahead of February’s snap election, behind only Merkel’s conservatives under their new leader Friedrich Merz.
The government German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, once a minister in Merkel’s cabinet, has extended border controls and curbed benefits offered to asylum seekers.
Meanwhile, Merz has pledged to reform Germany’s constitutionally enshrined “debt brake,” fiercely defended by Merkel during her time in power.
However, Merz “would risk losing the loyalty and approval of a large part of his own party if he wanted to distance himself” from Merkel, Lammert said.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
RSS