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.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
RSS