The European project seems more endangered than at any other juncture and, therefore, is her biggest challenge. It will be largely up to Merkel whether it fails or succeeds, which is why she has placed Europe firmly at the centre of the agenda of her third term.
While most other European leaders were finished off by the financial crisis, Merkel has blossomed during it. She adroitly fended off a long-term recession in Germany at the time the global economic crisis hit by introducing economic stimulus packages and shortening working hours, whereby workers worked less but had their earnings topped up by the government rather than business.
Her future challenges will be to deal with underfunded public infrastructure, a flaccid education system and a lack of qualified workers, for which Germany will need immigrants — all of which could culminate to have a disastrous effect on the economy.
Her change of direction was seen as typical behaviour. Some said she cleverly used the emotionally charged moment of Fukushima as a way to get around previously stubborn, stick-in-the-mud energy bosses who were reluctant to embrace alternatives.
Merkel insiders later hinted she had not actually wanted Juncker, seeing him as a weak candidate, but realised that even she did not have clout enough to stand up to those who wanted him, including — rather importantly — the ever-powerful German tabloid Bild, and recognised the fact soon enough.
Her decision to back the man who went on to secure the post put her in a much stronger position than had she backed a loser. After more than 50 years, the Bundeswehr armed forces abolished compulsory conscription in July , as part of plans to reduce the size of the military from around , soldiers to a professional and much fitter army of , Merkel staunchly fought the opponents of Elterngeld within her own conservative alliance, having declared it to be one of the planks of her government policy, defending in particular the right for men to take time off to bring up their children.
While not boosting the birth rate, the policy has had a major impact on family life in Germany, particularly on the lives of working mothers.
Merkel has scored points for her foreign policy endeavours, most recently ensuring that she is in constant dialogue with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over the Crimea dispute.
Angela Merkel with Lothar de Maiziere, then premier of the democratically elected East German government, in , before unification. It likely that her early contact with East German politics may have given her ample experience of working with the type of tough character she would encounter later in her career, but may also have guided her belief that centrism was the best approach, rather than inflexible dogmatism.
Growing up behind the Iron Curtain in an economic landscape many considered bleak may have given her an insight into hardship that lots of leaders never get the chance to acquire. She admitted to The Guardian later that, on the day the Berlin Wall came down in , changing the world, she went to the sauna with her friend, as it was what they had already arranged. It didn't stop her seizing the opportunities the collapse the Eastern Bloc presented, however, and within a month had joined a nascent pro-democracy party which, after unification in ended up merging with the Christian Democratic Union CDU party.
At that point, she had sufficient political standing that she could run for and win a seat in the Bundestag; one she has since held seven times. At the time of the cabinet of Helmet Kohl, German politics was very male dominated. He used to refer to her as Mein Madchen my girl. Her talent was rapidly spotted and she joined the government of Helmut Kohl before he lost power in , but she was well placed to become leader of the CDU, from where she made a bid for government in Her four election victories have not been plain sailing, with only one being within a whisker of an overall majority, but her skill at deal forging has allowed her to successfully form coalitions strong enough to keep her in the chancellorship.
Ms Merkel's best result was in when she came within five seats of winning a majority. Some have put her success down to her adherence to the tried and tested, or to formulas. She has maintained a strong Christian faith throughout her life and has been known to speak in church meetings and talk about her beliefs — something that has helped her counter those who have criticised her welcoming of Muslim refugees. Her relationship with the church and her background as a post-graduate research scientist PhD in quantum chemistry has led to comparisons to Margaret Thatcher masters in chemistry , but she is considered much more understated, and potentially, therefore, less divisive.
She is extremely assured in her style, with her almost identikit outfits successfully smothering any chatter about what she is wearing, distracting from her political messaging.
But beyond her political appearance and appearances, she is most frequently photographed enjoying one of her greatest passions — football — as a major cheerleader for the national team's success over the years. Inevitably, after 16 years at the top, there remains a number of criticisms of her legacy, besides the resentment from some about the high number of immigrants allowed to stay in Within months of the influx caused by the migration crisis, there was a sharp rise in far-right-linked violence, spiking after a long period which saw relatively few incidents.
In the election, the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland AfD party, which had only been founded four years before, became the third largest party in the Bundestag. It came in a country that has a longstanding ban on Nazi symbols. A protest by the far-right anti-immigrant group PEGIDA in Dresden in was among the expressions of anger against the influx of Syrian refugees during the migration crisis.
And while support for the AfD appears to have slipped slightly since , violence linked to the far-right has surged and has reached a year high since records began.
The epicentre of much of the hate crime is the old East, underscoring how a woman who grew up there has failed to tackle the degree to which the area previously under communist control has remained disadvantaged since unification. While there was jubilation for many when the Berlin Wall fell in , the former East Germany has struggled to see the same economic success that the old West has continued to enjoy, even under ex-East German Ms Merkel. Many say that unification — which brought together two countries and completely different systems after the fall of the Iron Curtain in , costing hundreds of billions of Deutschmarks and then euros — has been a success, and Ms Merkel has presided over a German economy that has prospered despite the cost.
But others say it has been at the expense of the old East, which is still economically behind the old West German regions. Another criticism levelled at Ms Merkel's Germany is its failure to fully switch to the renewable energy she said it would embrace after she decided to abandon nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Many environmentalists blame Angela Merkel's governments for failing to stop the use of polluting coal-fired power stations.
If the Greens do well on Sunday, it might be put down to the long standing chancellor earlier this year rejecting demands to bring forward an exit date for coal-powered energy generation in Germany. That date of is almost decades behind countries like the UK. But, with a week being a long time in politics, 16 years is a very, very long time. And after such huge span of time at the top, even her critics admit, in the international arena at least, her absence will leave a very very large hole.
Watch Live. By Philip Whiteside, international news reporter. Donner und Blitzen Within two years of her election in , Ms Merkel faced one of the biggest crises the world has faced in recent times, when the financial system nearly collapsed. Barack Obama. Donald Trump. She sees anger as a wasted emotion she simply cannot afford to indulge.
For drama, Merkel goes to the opera—which she does a great deal. Another lesson from the Merkel manual is to out-prepare the man across the negotiating table. When her turn comes, her calm command of facts reduces their grandiloquence to its simplest components. Merkel does not counter bombast with bombast, but with deflation.
Yet another rule in the Merkel playbook is to treat high office as a job , not as an identity. She keeps talking to Putin and to Trump and the others because she sees that as her job. So insults and attacks, however personal and low, are not about her. But mostly she brushes off such insults.
Moreover, she has starved the tabloids and the internet of juicy material. She does not tweet. Not a whiff of scandal has touched her two decades in public life.
Neither tell-all memoirs nor leaks have seeped from her office. Read: Fear of a female president. When Barack Obama visited the chancellor for the last time as president in late , he was startled to see the same faces he first saw eight years earlier running her office. Her staff is loyal because she works them no harder than she works herself. Merkel clearly enjoys power. To a remarkable extent, Germany has handled it, though the AfD sits in the Bundestag as a result.
Merkel does not seem to crave the trappings of power. She has no private jets, yachts, or mansions. Her security personnel are instructed to hang way back. Only his name is on the buzzer.
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