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.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS