History will judge that the biggest and most damaging blunder of Merkel's career was not austerity or immigration, but support for the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine which ultimately resulted in renewed hostility and new cold war between EU/US/NATO and Russia. And we all should hope to god that this cold war remains that – cold. That did not have to happen. All Merkel (and other less important European leaders, but mostly Merkel) had to do was to enforce the pact agreed by the protest leaders and President Yanukovich, of which pact they served as guarantors. But Merkel followed US Government Russophobia into the abyss. History will not look at that kindly.
1
A historical footnote will recall that Merkel was an East German stateswoman and EU disciple. History will remember her as the "principal architect of the new catastrophe of violence that inevitably erupted in Germany. She blindly, criminally, tragically opened Germany's borders to millions of Asian and African Muslim migrants and their children whose arrival displaced native Germans, consumed their resources, ruined schools, and ushered in a new era of state oppression and censorship. When German women were raped and murdered by their new neighbors, the state covered it up. Merkel, astonishingly, put migrant priorities above those of the the German people. The people noticed these appalling slights but were slow to anger. Their anger could have been assuaged had Merkel acknowledged her mistakes and corrected them, but she never did. Nor did her successor. A terrorist attack in 2019 sparked a popular uprising in Germany that brought down the German government" Etc Etc
6
I am more worried about the disaster Trump will be leaving us with.
1
So Merkel failed to instill into Germans a responsibility for their fellow European countries? What a ridiculous claim to make.
How should she have gone about convincing Germans to pay for Italians and Greeks who have refused for GENERATIONS to get their housees in order? No working judicial system, tax evasion goes unchecked (especially for bigger earners/companies), bloated yet ineffectice bureaucracy, political corruption, etc.
Germany is by far the largest net payer in the EU (as well it should be). It has underwritten huge loans of various sorts to bail out the corrupt and incompetent southerners, while the well-off of those exact same countries are pulling out their money buying up Berlin real estate and other German assets.
You can hardly blame the Germans (and Dutch, and Finns, and Danes and so on) for balking at throwing even more money into bottomless buckets when these countries show no political will or ability to tackle their fundamental problems first.
3
The Merkel era finished a policy that was still marked by the stale atmosphere of past times. Her governance style was solution-based. There was no space for strong men liking to show off. Her style stood in contrast to those of Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Viktor Orbán.
4
“I hope she is not a relic of an era that is coming to an end.”
Hear, hear. She was the steady, yet liberal hand that guided Germany to unprecedented prominence and prosperity. Not only did their economy continue to grow, but they rose to be the most influential country in the continent, and one of the most influential on the globe. Under her, Germany has developed into a model for the world, just as Merkel herself was a model of good governance. But I think perhaps the article is correct when it says: “She managed Germany’s rise to once again become Europe’s leading power. But she failed to prepare Germans sufficiently for what that means.”
She alone could not change the German public mindset, but to be leaders of Europe once again is not something Germans were/are prepared for. In my time there, it seemed to me like they were more content to work to make their own country prosperous and leave the rest of the world to itself.
1
Mind the hysterical hyperbole, nyt To wit: "Ms. Merkel allowed Germans to be proud again,"
Indeed.
1
@Anthill Atoms proud of what exactly? that their country is paying the welfare of millions of migrants, who are not contributing anything to the economy? after all, you have to do something with the profit of that booming economy. That their women will not able to walk on the streets after dark, or go to a New Year's Eve party safely? is this really an accomplishment? do we know what percentage of Germans actually stand behind Merkel? I don't see the numbers shown anywhere. How many months did it take her to form a government after the last election? there is a pretty good chance that her legacy will be more chaos than before, if not a civil war of some sort. Thanks to her, AFD has become stronger and will dictate German politics very soon, just like Obama was followed by Trump, not because of his talent necessarily but because of Obama's failed policies and lack of touch with the people.
6
We are celebrating Bush 41 for having traveled “the high road of humility in DC…not bothered by heavy traffic” as Alan Simpson put it, drying & to great effect yesterday.
Modesty/moderation/absent ideology are a rarity in democracies because they are inconsistent w/ democracy's vigor. Vigor is necessary because democracy is not the default human condition. Dictatorship is.
Both Merkel & Bush are products of dictatorship; their "modesty/moderation/absent ideology" are a reaction to it.
In the case of Bush, the dictatorship was benevolent—"noblesse oblige" is both its marker & its mechanism.
Merkel, like her ally Obama, will be judged also by ”what comes next.” There is no reason to assume it will not follow the Bush trajectory.
Bush 41 gave us Clinton, and Bush 43, Obama… And Obama, despite all his corrupt efforts, or perhaps because of them, ironically gave us Trump.
“Democratic” socialism is dangerous delusion, a synergy of existential threats:
• the promise a pair of mutually exclusive propositions: open borders & an entitlement state where all needs are rights & all wants are free. Utter nonsense. Just do the math.
• the acceptance of Obama-Clinton’s terrorist diaspora and Iran nuke deal.
The US will be the EU in a blink of an eye & the logical endpoint of this leftist madness is the US the permanent repository for the world's increasing billions of dependent poor.
Writ large, the logical endpoint of this leftist madness is the vanishing of democracy.
5
When open borders elitists chant "we can manage" and "immigration nation" what they really mean is that that their masters the US and European business owner few percent, our contemporary nobility, can gain immense unearned wealth and power by importing millions of the equivalent of low-wage slaves, and desperate voters for their parties of wealth redistribution - while passing off the sacrifice and costs of supporting 10's of millions of no dominant language ability and 6th grade education persons who will never make enough to pay taxes that compensate for their drain on the state on to the citizen and working middle classes. Especially the middle class who both the left and right 1%ers hate, resent and fear for their relative independence, wealth and education and so inherent potential to effectively revolt when oppressed. What we need to happen is to demand that if our "leaders" want to maintain "open borders" the flooding of our societies with 10's of millions of ignorant desperate foreigners that they also demand that our elites "manage" and sacrifice as well by paying upper marginal tax rates of 90% in order to meet these humanitarian emergencies they continually insist that the rest of us the 90% sacrifice and share to solve.
10
It is ridiculous to say that she enabled the nationalists or far right to grow. In Eastern Germany they had been growing before the refugee crisis. Merkel did not create the trecks on the Balkan Route - the reasons go much deeper. Merkel just temporarily openend the borders and allowed organized transfer from Hungary to Germany because otherwise people would have walked on the motorways - courtesy of Hungary stopping the trains - and could have been killed. And of course she said that we will be able to manage - should she have broken down and cry and spread a message of uncertainty? Ironically, those who previously complained that she is too weak and does not want to take a leadership position or clear political stance have not stopped bashing her for the very clear humanitarian position and optimistic approach she took.
7
This article is a highly biased, unbalanced piece of pro-Merkel hagiography. In discussing Merkel's aspiring successors the writer conveniently left out a mention of Jens Spahn: a conservative gay man who strongly opposes Merkel's immigration policies on the grounds of Islam's hostility to women's rights and gay people. Mr. Spahn clearly does not fit the writer's simplistic left-wing categories. The writer only quoted politicians and writers from the left side of the spectrum; not one person from the right side of the political specturm was cited. This is far from professional, enlightening journalism. A poor job indeed.
14
The news of Merkel opening Germany’s borders to Syrian refugees in the fall of 2015 reached me in Israel. I was with friends in Haifa. We were mesmerized watching the TV coverage showing thousands of refugees heading for the German border with Austria either on foot or by train. We looked in disbelief at the burghers of Munich, young and old, welcoming the arrivals with ecstatic expressions on their faces and fluffy teddy bears in their hands. Admittedly we suppressed memories of trains that seventy-five years earlier had taken their human cargo to Nazi concentration and extermination camps in Poland.
We asked ourselves what it was that prompted the German chancellor to surprise her fellow German and European citizens with such an act of generous outreach. Was it Merkel’s attempt to atone in one fell swoop for the horrific crimes committed by a previous generation of Germans? Had Merkel’s seemingly selfless gesture got anything to do with her setting her eyes on the Nobel Peace Prize? Or was it just pragmatic considerations like replenishing Germany’s aging population with the help of people escaping bloodshed in their home country? We will never know.
What is certain, however, is that Germany’s ‘Willkommenskultur’, its welcome culture, has been replaced by a sense of deep divisions over uncontrolled migration, which in turn has given rise to the AfD, an unpalatable right-wing anti-migrant party. The road to hell, it seems, is paved with good intentions.
6
What is truly sad, is that the mistake was not hers.
Some junior no one was the one who sent the tweet heard around the world. He was the one who said ‘y’all come in now, ya hear?’
And in true German style, Mrs Merkel, instead of saying ‘that guy speaks for himself’, turned around and backed up a statement made by her office.
She could not back out and look heartless, but history now remembers her as the one who opened the floodgates for the economic migrants to come in and rape Europe.
The migrants beloved by the Liberals, were 85% males aged 18-30, and nationalities were all over Africa, Asia, even Latin Americans, all ‘fleeing the war in Syria’.
She let them all in, and was not even her idea.
Sorry to see this is her legacy, I was quite a huge fan of hers.
2
@AutumnLeaf
can you provide any sort of evidence or a source that the open borders were caused by miscommunication?
Not only am I hearing this for the very first time but also it doesn't sound reasonable.
3
To atone for their crimes against Jews and make themselves feel better, Germany let in a million refugees, mostly Muslim. The result is that, for the first time since the war, The reconstituted Jewish community in Germany has been rendered unsafe. Some Jewish leaders have even talked to the AFD.
19
This is 100% true. Having killed off a culture that was highly assimilated and doing them no harm they decided it would be a great idea to bring in an unassimilated culture that will do them damage. This is what happens when your thinking is based on ideology and not reality.
11
@JerseyGirl
your last sentence is very true. Unfortunately also the rest is true to a certain extend.
It should be stated though, that the Jewish community - or at least their representatives - strongly supported and still support Merkel's move.
The highest problem is, that the open borders were intended for refugees from war but that we lost control and all sort of underprivileged poured it.
Also, Merkel had soon taken measures to revert her policy but she can't communicate that properly because she's afraid to lose her face. It's good that there will be a new party leader elected tomorrow. I guess she will then soon be gone as Chancellor. Will miss her though...
3
Marco became arrogant about the needs and wants of the German people, another politician that stayed in office for too long.
2
Thanks Merkel we germans are angry, and we have no reservations to show it. Like in nearly other nation we are angry at this new world order, this so called liberalism. Which is no liberalism for the people like the Gilets jaunes, who hardly meet their needs far below the standards you would expect for a nation like france. Or the 'deplorables' in america, crammed with opioids, strapped of hope. Is this really the kind of legacy you would expect from a saviour like Obama ? All the do-gooder forgot to care for their own people, and now you were looking for a magic fairy to fulfill your aspirations. I got a message, this fairy is not Merkel.
For a german it was always seeking redemption for the legacy of WWII - and booting the bill for the visions of others. Merkel changed that attitude, and she did it in a way, that kept the society coherent. Now we feel little obligations to transfer our saving for other nations lavish social spending, nor do we have to justify an harder stance against migration. Merkel did a great job in relieving us from the stigma of fascism, it gave us the freedom to be angry.
Mr. Varoufakis has it just half right, who comes next will certainly be worse. But Merkel is not the catastrophe, Merkel is the one who prepared germany for the catastrophe of populist and socialists, for the Trumps and Varoufakis alike. Like i said, Merkel made us angry, and we are finally willing to put our own nation first, and this is a good thing.
7
Nope. it is your racism, disguised as "economic concern" that is tearing Germany, Europe, and America apart. Our deplorables are deplorable because they hold RACIST views like Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. Blame whomever you want for your racism but that is what it is. Don't kid yourself, and you're not fooling anyone!
4
Preventing crises for 12 years seems to me, as an American, like a tremendous accomplishment. I deeply admire Angela Merkel for her PhD in physics, for her modest life style, for her stability, for her cordiality, for her knowledge of Russian, German, and English...and the list goes on.
She is a brilliant woman and a woman with heart, as she showed in how she dealt with refugees. I wish we had had a ruler with her skills at the helm of the United States during the past 30 years. We ourselves are in a deep "colloquial vulgarism unprintable in the NYTimes used by AM."
8
National leaders always make many, often very bad mistakes. The successful ones are those who manage to get the one or two big things right. I think of Ronald Reagan, who despite all the things he did wrong, was instrumental in bringing about the end of the cold war. Despite the things she got right, Merkel got her one big thing wrong. By opening her country's, and therefore Europe's borders to a million or more migrants who can't assimilate into the national culture and who will never leave she caused irreparable harm. It turned her tenure as leader into a catastrophe.
10
Merkel has three (3!) more years in office; Trump will be out of office in two (assuming 1 term). It is way too early to pronounce her legacy. Three years ago, Trump was literally a punch line for most Americans, and no one looked to Germany as the savior of the West or Merkel as the last hope for liberal democracy.
A lot can change in three years.
7
“As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, . . “
Well now, there’s more to that story. The US started or helped start those “multiple wars” and destabilize the Middle East. There was a direct undotted line between many of the refugees the Germans took in under Angela Merkel and United States foreign policy. We have barely lifted a finger to deal ethically with the consequences of the conflicts we’ve promoted.
I worry as much as anyone about the rise of populist nationalism in Europe, but at least 30 or the 32 EU states are run by coalition governments, a concept foreign to the United States, and an effective way to blunt political extremism.
When I hear Americans criticize Merkel for her immigration initiatives, the risks of which she was fully aware, it makes my blood boil. She, who knows how it turn out, did the “right thing” while we sat on our hands.
6
Over 20% expansion of GDP over any 13 years is impressive for a fully mature economy. It is even more impressive when we realize those years include all the years of the Great Recession, and the whole term of the implosion of the Southern tier of the EU bailed out by Germany.
It is only a 1.4% annual rate compounded, but that is for a steady 13 years that are all bad years for everyone else.
Over the same time, American take home pay has been completely flat. In fact, it has been flat adjusted for inflation for near 40 years. So that makes the German look pretty good.
5
Meanwhile, Putin laughs as his investments in the Middle East have amplified our ineptness there, leading to the continuing destabilization that has flooded Europe with migrants.
And Putin laughs doubly as his investments in the West continue to tear us apart as the opportunistic "populists" he props up get away with blaming the least fortunate in society (the poor, minorities, immigrants) for the lingering effects of the Great Recession.
Garry Kasparov, a man we all know sees several moves ahead, has been warning us for years on Putin.
Can we start listening to smart people again, please?
5
@D.A.Oh -- This fixation on Putin is not "smart."
Smart would be what Merkel has done.
3
Not a bad article on the whole, and I like the diversity of voices you included, but I think the analysis is skewed at the end by the failure to include the current rise of the Greens, a center-left and unambiguously pro-refugee party, as a point of contrast to the rise of the AfD. Of course this has largely happened since the last General election, and the AfD are still in third place, with polling numbers not that far off what they got in the election (14–16% as opposed to the 12.6% they got in the general election, but the Greens have jumped from 8% to anything between 18% to 22% depending on which polling organization you believe. I have gone from joking about future chancellor Robert Habeck to half believing it. This – a jump from 5th to 2nd place in about a year – is as much a legacy of the Merkel era as anything going on in Chemnitz – it confirms many of her political instincts and reading of the electorate – and yet it goes entirely unremarked. Amazing. I guess the erroneous narrative of "Merkel did fine but then she let the refugees in" is just a simpler story to tell and sell to the readers of the New York Times.
7
@R. Cronin..I wish many NYT reader would read your comment. I too see much hope in this development and I think it speaks well to Merkel's overall impact on the country.
Human expectations are stupidly high because most humans have no more higher cognition than natural selection gave and artificial selection took away from a domesticated sheep.
One person can only do so much.
No person's achievements, no matter how successful he or she has been in the present, can be guaranteed into the future after the person has left the stage.
A successful leader develops a cadre of followers, one of which might become the next good leader.
You can be sure that Putin and Xi have such followers.
However, most countries, like the U.S. and Germany, follow the Venezuelan model: Hugo Sánchez, e.g., was one of THE most successful presidents that country ever had. However, Francisco Madero quickly wrecked all of Sánchez's achievements because Sánchez did not lay a groundwork that his successor could follow. Sánchez, like Trump and Merkel, was all about the cult of a personality.
1
Hugo Chávez you might mean.
In any case, Merkel does have suitable successors
4
In the U.S. we could only dream of a conservative like Merkel. Here we are struggling with the fascism that the German people shun in horror. And our Christians are part and parcel of the problem - as they undoubtedly were in the Third Reich.
8
The DAX Performance index stood at 2,500 in March 2003. Today it’s at 11,000. German unemployment was at 3.4% in June of this year. That’s after “her 2015 decision to welcome more than a million migrants into Germany.” France’s rate was 9.2%; Italy’s 10.9%.
As Margaret Thatcher found in 1990, there comes a time when a politician has to move on. Hopefully, in replacing Angela Merkel, the German people will look at the above statistics and focus on building on her accomplishments.
6
Merkel did reap the rewards from the Hartz reforms pushed through by her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, she has publicly acknowledged this too.
The circumstances were also right for Germany to prosper. Their economy has a large share of high quality product manufacturing which is not (yet) challenged by Asian companies, in fact Germany manages a trade surplus with China.
That prosperous industrial zone goes beyond Germany's borders and includes the Netherlands and Flanders (Belgium) with their harbors.
5
@Brewing Monk...Much agreed, but she was and is smart enough to know her good fortune and have it continue.
I disagree. This is a shallow and intellectually dishonest assessment. The current popular unrest, dissatisfaction with traditional parties and return to nationalism in the West is no single leaders fault, and certainly not Ms. Merkels...it is a consequence of our economic system with its enormous rise of income inequality, outsourcing, decline of social mobility coupled with the consequences of global warming, violence and corruption in developing countries leading to migrant caravans on foot and by boat.
12
I worked in Germany for a while. Their kids get free college tuition and everyone gets free healthcare. While we have tens of thousands of US troops based there protecting them. While we pay 5% of our GDP on defense while they pay 1% and day by meet the NATO minimum. Trump is right
57
@Jay Lincoln
The German people pay hefty taxes to support their generous social system. Nothing is "free," but German society does value their benefits and are willing to pay what is necessary to provide them.
It's a legitimate criticism that Germany, like other NATO members, needs to increase its monetary contributions to the common defense, and there is a plan in place to do so (which Germany and others are following). However, it is also worth noting that for the greater part of NATO's history, other NATO members were willing to look the other way for Germany's limited contributions and build up of national defenses, due to nascent fears of a resurgence of a strong German military in the wake of two devastating world wars.
54
They don't have free healthcare. They have an insurance system. but they have ways of controlling healthcare costs so overall the burden is much less.
52
@Beth
Your point about other NATO partners' historical concern about German military expenditures is correct.
And, yes, Germany is planning to spend more on defense. But even in their long range budget, they plan to fall about $20 billion/year short of the 2% target.
That $20 billion can fund an awful lot of great social services.
I'm not suggesting their spending priorities are wrong, or that they don't have the sovereign right to make them.
I would only say that they should be honest about never planning to meet the commitment that they made to their NATO allies.
20
Until she championed unrestricted immigration by economic migrants into Europe, Ms Merkel was clearly all about the Europeanization of Germany. She was and remains a nationalist, her focus was a world wherein the former East attained the quality of life of the former West Germany. She succeeded.
Her policy of austerity was an extension of her nationalism. The burden was on the southern countries of Europe while the protections were for the German banks and the German people. The policy was successful for Germany and a disaster for the south.
Her immigration policy also the burden of vetting on the southern countries of the EU to allow Germany the benefits of the economic boost. While couched in terms of humanitarian aid to refugees, the reality is that >80% of the migrant tidal wave were men of 18 to 28 years looking for jobs. When the southern countries couldn't provide the gate-keeper services expected of them by the EU (re: Germany, France and GB), the un-vetted millions moved north.
When the un-vetted did arrive in Germany, they were disproportionately Muslim, unwilling or unable to adopt German secular social norms. The young immigrant men became a large percentage of all young men living in Germany; something like 1 in 5. The cultural impact has been a disaster.
Ms Merkel did much for Germany. Her economic policies, including austerity were good for the country, not so much for the EU. Her immigration policies were a disaster for everyone.
73
Merkel did not change immigration policies. They have been on the books in German common law for decades. She did however in a humanitarian gesture that is well explained by the disastrous Germany 20th century history, allow 1 000 000 war refugees enter the county at once. She can’t be blamed for this. The US gets the blame for creating the mess in the Middle East in the first place. And right wing agitators get the blame for fabricating an immigration crisis.
26
@Oliver Herfort
Unrestricted immigration was never the policy of Germany. It was decided unilaterally by Merkel and has destabilized the entire continent. Additionally, it is questionable how many migrants are actually Syrian "refugees".
Even left leaning publications like the NYT has stopped referring to them as such.
25
@Oliver Herfort Your comment is false to the core. There were not 1 million refugees that poured in from a country at war. If that had been the case, most would be in refugee camps at the border countries they came from. Most did not come from Syria, they came from Africa. In addition, the US did not create the mess in the middle east. Like other western countries they seek to stabilize tribal nations run by the interpretation of Islam by different sects that would just as soon see each other dead - has been true since 300 AD.
11
In Germany and America immigrants are a tool of the far right, not as those who fear the influence of others unlike themselves believe, but to wrest power from those who would restrain their blind drive for the next source of profits.
And it is the far right that is jeopardizing the European Union. Some call it populism, but there is a big difference between those who clamor for rights of the common people against the autocrats, and those who are used by the autocrats to keep the people stirred up against the immigrants or the tight-fisted E.U.
Angela Merkel steered her country clear of our "multiple wars."
she kept free of our self-inflicted 2008 near depression. I guess she should have done more for the debtor countries than she did, but she kept the Union together. And Yanis Varoufakis the former Greek finance minister is heading a cohort in alliance with our Sanders Institute fighting the right wing nationalists who are pulling apart that very Union.
Angela Merkel is without a doubt "more socially conscious" than other western leaders; this is more pronounced than ever in our present administration. She is the anti-thesis of all that Trump, Kushner, Bolton and Navarro are leading our frail country into. I weep to think that her legacy could succumb to this band of nationalist strongmen knowingly undermining our hard-won fabric of civility.
92
@betty durso No, immigrants are not the tools of the far right. They are typically used by the far left for votes. In Merkel's assessment of the 'refugee' 'crisis' she assumed that innocent people were being murdered in Syria and wanted to help them. Sadly, while it's true that innocents were being killed, she failed to realize that her openness would act to invite economic immigrants by the hundreds of thousands. But even more important, she and others in the ivory towers that 'lead' the rest, were oblivious to the fact that Islam doesn't mix with the western cultures of tolerance - we don't make our women stay inside or cover up, we don't believe that it's okay to rape or fondle a woman just because she is not Muslim or happens to wear a skirt or bikini. On top of all of that, she failed to recognize the impact on Europe as a whole monetarily when a million people cross the border with no education or ability to speak a western language. The corruption occurring on the black market for 'papers' that tell the recipient country who you are and where you came from didn't help either. Europe is destroying itself from within, and sadly, Merkel was the enabler.
17
@Ma Merkel did not invite hundreds of thousands of immigrants, no matter how often this false statement is repeated. I understand that it is almost impossible today to lookup Wikipedia or any other credible source for the sequence of events. But at the time she told Hungary and Austria that Germany would let Syrian refugees into the country, there have been already tens of thousands of refugees in Budapest and hundreds of thousands already had crossed the collapsed borders.
She made mistakes, like many other leaders, a few years earlier, when the U.N. repeatedly warned that they were running out of funding for refugee camps because a lot of countries didn't pay their share. I remember articles in 2014 and 2013 that the camps had supply problems regarding food and medical support. What did anyone expect? That these people will suffer and die silently in these camps?
For too many years, Germany and other European countries have been hiding away behind the safe country rule, so Greece, Italy, and Spain had to deal with the consequences all by themselves, in addition to the fallout of the economic crises and austerity policies. On the other side no legal safe way for real refugees to apply for asylum in the EU, and border controls that were not able to stem against such masses.
The only thing really trying to destroy Europe from within, are far-right movements supported by the same shady elements who got the Trump Administration into power.
10
@Ani: thank you for presenting facts, clearly and concise
2
Without Merkel’s 2015 decision to unilaterally open the borders, there would have been no Brexit and very possibly not even a Trump presidency.
Migration has played the central role in bringing Nationalist Populism to life. She breathed fire into the monster. The scenes of hundreds of thousands illegal migrants pushing past police on the Austrian & Hungarian borders was mana to Brexiteers.
History will not remember her as glowingly as this article!
68
Fact: Trump lost the popular vote. He got elected because of arcane American voting rights. The Syrian war refugees were abused by right wing nationalists after Trump embolden them
Fact: the Brexit vote was a referendum, initiated by David Cameron. Without fear mongering by the right wing UKIP the referendum would have turned out in favor of staying. Now where the British realize the mistake they committed, a majority favors to stay
2
Despite the various missteps during her chancellorship, Merkel has always struck me as a very decent person, a politician who governs to do good. I, for one, will miss her when she steps down, as she strove to make Germany, Europe, and the World, a better place during her tenure.
57
The road to you-know-where is paved with good intentions.
If you think Merkel, acting entirely on her own, opening all of Europe to millions of non-assimulating 'refugees', will make Europe a better place, you need to get our more.
What incredible arrogance for her to decide what was good for all of Europe.
11
I would not add too much drama to her fall.
She is chancellor for how long? 13 years. If you got tired by Obama after 8 years, imagine what would happen to other people after even 13-14 years.
The German economy is in a better shape than the American, smaller though, obviously. The US debts under Trump are exploding.
US international standing and politics are currently chaotic, and actually hurting the US economy. The German is not.
It's true that she went too far with her, badly explained, immigrant policy. But 1 million immigrants did not damage the German economy which is a good sign, isn't it?
Her biggest disadvantage are, well, those 13-14 years at the top of the country. It's just too long. She's an easy target now, and it is good and important that there is a change of power.
I was also very surprised when she, herself, announced out of the blue to not go for another legislature period. Obama or Trump would or will never do that.
54
@Wirfegen US debt under Obama was the largest in history (larger than combined presidents before him). This is not about Trump and did not happen under his watch. He is not my favorite, but it's a lie to throw this on him.
5
On balance, I am grateful for Angela Merkel's leadership in Germany and Europe.
8
I disagree. Merkel's infamous immigration decision will be the only real stain on her otherwise excellent track record.
Rejuvenating an aging population with mostly young immigrants was not a bad idea per se, but those from cultures that are vastly different from ours tend to be hard to integrate especially when they come in large numbers (risk of a parallel culture).
The austerity supposedly imposed on the Southern euro zone countries however is widely misunderstood. It is only based on the different nationalistic lens we use when looking at Europe vs. the US:
The people of Spain, Greece and Italy can migrate to Germany or Denmark just as easily as those from Mississippi and West Virginia can to New York. The economy of Mississippi is negatively affected by the strong dollar just like Greece is by the strong euro.
In fact, Greece has always had more levers to spur its economy: the ability to set corporate tax rates, labor laws, etc.
Reforming those, in fact, has allowed Spain to climb out of the 2007 crisis fallout and make its economy more compatible with the North.
But... nobody ever talks about US State budget austerity, introducing a parallel currency for the poorest States to free them from the strong dollar etc. This is because our economic views are heavily biased and limited by history and nationalism.
7
@Brewing Monk
1. Have you seen the people fleeing this war, this butchery ? I bet the americans had a similar attitude 1938, when they send the St Louis back to Nazi Germany, so that all jews on this ship could be slaughtered.
For weeks everyone cried out loud the help these refugees, for the sake of humanity, in the name of our selfdeclared moral supremacy. Well, we didn't just talk the talk.
2. Are we really serious about mingling with the perception of the muslims about our own culture ? Do you really think, that they can change us before we can change them ? You must really have a very low self-esteem of our culture.
I do believe in my culture, i do believe we can change the middle east.
Wasn't it america who taught us about sacrifice and encouraged us to stand up for western democracy. Wasn't this the attitude for the pax americana ?
We have learned well, and we will apply this lessons on the middle east.
With letting in over a million migrants Merkel put us on the right path. We have just to go on and finalize it.
3
@Mathias Weitz I agree with you on the cause, but not that this battle should be fought on our own territory (i.e. A European Islam).
Images of Egypt in the 60s and 70s (e.g. https://egyptianstreets.com/2014/04/05/egypts-golden-years-in-23-vintage-photos/) are encouraging. The culture of misogyny and intolerance introduced and spread by Wahhabi imams is not as deeply embedded and long existing as many people think. It is the dominance over Islam by these radical imams that needs to be reversed, in the Middle East itself. As long as we enable the wrong leadership in countries like Saudi-Arabia just for oil or selling weapons, we are fueling the problem instead of helping to cure it.
4
Interpreting a country is difficult. There’s a lot of noise. But spend time in Germany. What impresses? Schoolchildren walking in neat rows on their way to some activity. Trains, wonderful trains. A country that invests in cities the way Americans invest in the military-industrial complex. Christmas markets. A democratic, intelligent country that is aware how quickly the path forward can go dark.
That investment in children the Germans make matters. It’s the future.
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Steve Bannon and Putin strike again.
Get rid of all strong women.
No, boys, WE THE PEOPLE will get rid of YOU. WE will not allow you to destroy OUR world again.
Not now. Not ever.
5
Conservatives are typically not socially conscious of the hardships inherent in their fiscal policies or the need for some liberalization of their more harsh positions. That is their main flaw. Democracies are primarily liberal instruments of governing that protect human rights. Therefore, Conservative bents can and will corrupt that need for liberalization from time to time. We are seeing it now in the US. Trump is setting himself up for one term only. By 2020, the demand for a more reasonable liberal mentality in the US will take over. The 2018 midterms showed the way.
1
With essentially liberal and global instincts, and decisive leadership qualities Angela Merkel could hardly be a leader for Germany and Europe that are looking for the populist demagogues.
2
Yet, you see no connection between Obama’s tenure and the current leadership. The people, in both cases, were fed up!
7
@Sue Fed up with what exactly?
2
@Tony, primarily open arms and hands.
While Ms. Merkel was, at times, a very capable administrator, her leadership remains marred by her unilateral decision to open Germany's borders for millions of migrants (there was no vote on it in the Bundestag - the German parliament). The absence of any formal discussion before making such a monumental decision helped fuel the resentment that feeds the resurgent nationalistic right fringe, and damaged the body politic in Germany for years to come.
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@Pete in Downtown Again and a again I hear this false argument. Merkel did not open any borders. They were open already. Germany is a Schengen-member.
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@Mark B. I didn't say she opened borders. However, even within the Schengen system, member countries have to agree to admit migrants who are from non-Schengen countries. It might well have been the right thing to do, but Merkel did make that move without any prior debate and vote in the Bundestag. While it was within her right as Chancellor to make this decision on her own, it fueled the perception of it being done very top-down.
1
@Pete in Downtown To be even more precise: Merkel didn't open borders that weren't already open (Schengen agreement). However, she did "open borders" by her decision to admit over a million migrants, many of them refugees, into Germany. Under Schengen, the country in which a migrant first enters the Schengen area is responsible for that migrant's processing, housing etc. For geographical reasons alone, that is more often than not not Germany. Merkel's move may have been a noble gesture, but making it without a formal debate and parliamentary vote was a serious mistake.
1
“ … Merkelism, a modest but steadfast liberalism built on consensus rather than confrontation …"
Ms. Merkel did not ask either her fellow Germans or the other countries in the E.U. if they wanted to admit hundreds of thousands of poorly-educated Muslim migrants from the Near-East, N. Africa, and East Asia. The decision that the E.U. should welcome these migrants was not built on consensus.
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@ann...It was in fact built on the existing Schengen agreement among EU members.
4
It is fascinating to me how nobody seems to ever think that overpopulation is the real problem.
This mess we find ourselves in may have nothing to do with politics and all to do with overpopulation.
Ask a chicken farmer, if you don’t believe me. Their first order of business is to trim the upper part of their chickens’ beaks so they can’t peck on each other in overcrowded small cages.
Member of any successful species, human or animal, will attack each other as they try to secure enough space, food and shelter to meet their basic needs for survival.
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@Truth Is True
Historically, the environment limited the size of a population. Whenever a population grew too large for the resources that its environment could provide, some people would die unless the population could take over the neighboring land or send some of its people away to find new land elsewhere. Much of Syria is semi-arid or desert. The dearth of water restricted its population until the 20th century. In 1900, there were less than a million Syrians. By 2009, there were over 20,000,000.
Farmers dug wells to tap underground reservoirs. With so many people needing water in such a dry environment, the water table dropped. In the years preceding the civil war, farmers did not have enough water for irrigation. They moved their large families to the cities to find work, where many ended up joining the Arab Spring.
Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are also over-populated, and have been encouraging their excess populations to move to the U.S. The U.S. has tried to absorb so many people that it is now the world’s 3rd most populated country, and is facing its own environmental limitations.
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@Ann. I wholeheartedly concur. Thank you.
3
Would have been better to have noted the connection between letting in migrants (non-negotiable unless you want to triangulate with Nazis, whether in Germany, here, or anywhere else) and the addiction to austerity for others in order to prop up irresponsible German and French banks. The latter laid the groundwork for the reaction to the former.
Yet we see people like Hillary Clinton, who is obviously brilliant, somehow miss the fact that if post-crash policies, in the US and EU, though the US's was much better, if insufficient, had been fair, robust, sane, well, you wouldn't have the reservoir of despair that neofascists have weaponized. About as predictably as a result in quantum physics--like, to 80 decimal points you could have, and many did, predict what seems to have taken "centrists" by surprise.
No, to HRC, the mistake was letting in migrants. Not neoliberalism's predictable and predicted effects. But we just can't have a structural analysis or change of course, apparently. Warren, Sanders, AOC, et al: all fools. Stiglitz, Varoufakis--whom I was happy to see at least quoted here--all fools.
Well, yes, remove any real social democracy and unleash finance, and you're bound to create crashes, depressions, and that will give rise to fascism. We've been here before. Don't punish the perps but rather the victims, remove any non-rightwing explanation, and, yes, you'll get Trump, AfD, et al. Big shock.
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This was a wonderful, well-balanced article for the most part. However, it still contains the impulse to re-write history. The idea that Merkel steered her country or the E.U. through multiple crises is a fairy tale. What she did was allow reckless criminal bankers to place their greedy hands around the throats of political leaders across the monetary union and dictate the terms of their own rescue on the backs of the citizens of that union. She embraced economic dictatorship for the exclusive benefit of bad people instead of economic justice and the truth. Germans felt proud and were told they didn't have to care while youth unemployment in Greece soared to over 60% and what will cause decades of suffering for southern Europe was imposed.
Forced austerity, followed by a liberal migration policy was a recipe for disaster, guaranteed, and opened the door to racist, illiberal candidates. Merkel's first fatal error was doing the bidding of the banks whose activities caused an economic catastrophe. She leaves her mess for others to clean up and Varoufakis is absolutely correct in warning that the clean-up crew may turn out to be a very scary bunch.
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@Joe As If the banking crises started in Europe.
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@Joe
The banking crisis started with Goldman&Sucks in Europe and Lehman Brothels in america, which are, as i may recall, both american.
And lending money is not greedy, so isn't wanting it back. Greedy is knowingly promoting toxic assets to unaware buyers.
3
Blaming Angela Merkel for the gathering xenophobic bile in Europe seems to me to be the height of wrongheadedness. Is she also to be blamed for the rising tide of bigotry elsewhere in the world, including the United States and the UK?
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Leaders of Western "democracies" would do well to observe that the people don't want huge numbers of immigrants, asylum-seekers or refugees shoved down our throats when we who are already here can't find jobs that provide a decent living. The "progressive" readers of the New York Times will surely not like to hear that, but that's the truth that put Trump in the White House. Personally I can't stand Trump, but facts are facts.
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@Daisy that's not untrue, but at least in the United States, those are the same people who end up voting for GOP leaders who have not a single good idea for making their lives better. To wit: Trump. Talk about a guy who has nothing to offer anyone who doesn't have his last name - and at some point, if you're going to throw your support behind people like that, maybe the reason you're falling behind isn't because of the "elites," but because you can't see some very basic truths in life.
I suspect AfD in Germany would be much the same way - holding in front of them the unattainable idea of a Germany that's long since gone, if it ever existed, while failing to recognize that progress is hard and has bumps along the way, but it's better than the alternative.
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@Zach. Trump had 2 great ideas. Select conservative judges and justices for the federal courts. And listen to the people, who in the US as well as in many other western countries, are saying that their cultures are worth saving from mass immigration. Elites love mass immigration—fiscal elites because it brings cheap labor and political elites because it brings new voters. But the people suffer and Trump knew this.
12
The seeds of populism and fascism were originally planted and sprouted in the USA and nurtured by Republican President Trump and his enablers in Congress and conservative media with support from Christian conservative voters and American Nationalists.
Germany’s old demons have awaken from their old slumber as the world order continues to shift to authoritarianism with the good old USA leading the cavalcade.
7
My German friend reported a few years back that Merkel’s government was notifying certain homeowners that their third floor or other extra space would be used to house immigrant families in the near future. No option to decline the new tenants who did not speak the language and were uniformly unemployed. My friend believed that the program was born of Holocaust guilt among many Germans even today. Regardless imagine if it was your home.
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@David
It would be helpful to know if this notification to certain homeowners is indeed factual. If so, details are important. By now, we ought to be wary of "people are saying..." claims.
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@David
I can't confirm that.
I have never heard that government agencies have forced private homeowners.
There was money from the state for landlords who took in refugees.
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@David That was an idea from some leftists, nothing more. Our government never considered this.
6
The two chief flaws in any definition of the "Western Liberal Order" are the substitution of "stuff" for a purpose in life, and failure to pair citizens' rights with citizens' responsibilities.
One of Ms Merkel's accomplishments impacting us all was how, faced with Obama's suddenly discovered "lead from behind", she stood up to Putin when no one else had the guts to do so.
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Culture matters. As France knows, allowing large numbers of immigrants who are unable or unwilling to integrate into French/western culture is a serious and potentially existential problem. Merkel will be remembered for only this one thing, because the challenges and pain she so naively brought upon the German people will be with them for a very long time. Caring for people from broken cultures is necessary. But doing so the way Merkel has will ironically mean that Germany will be less able to help because of its own internal deterioration.
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@ehillesum What detoriation are you talking about? I am not aware of any.
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@Mark B.
Me neither.
Merkel truly did the right thing in admitting the refugees. She did not do the right thing in telling the rest of the EU that it was their duty to do the same. She did not do the right thing in follow up support for the communities that took the refugees in and was overly optimistic in how hard is was going to be for traumatized people from totally different cultures to integrate.
I will grant that Southern Europe has a completely different attitude toward many things than Germany including paying taxes, taking on debt, keeping honest books etc but Merkel's moralistic attitude and subsequent forced austerity on those countries and also protecting German banks who held bonds from those counties was wrong from a humanistic point of view and an economic one.
Corrosive youth unemployment in those countries and its destabilizing effects are the worst elements of her legacy.
7
great article. I am wondering though how much of the two key missteps can be attributed to Merkel personally, as opposed to "German mindset" that is shared by, let's say, elites. the one million refugees are not economic migrants but fled civil war and asked for asylum. the right for asylum is a strong one, on account of Germany s unhappy history. also, most Germans will know refugees from 70 years ago: either fleeing from Germany, or fleeing into Germany after the war ( 14 million refugees into West Germany!). I don't blame Merkel for believing we can manage! (even if people of course spoke German). (and indeed, I hasn't been managed superbly but it is difficult to see problems).
the austerity also seems to be related to a German/ protestant worldview in which debt is somehow uncool. I don't know much about it but if this view hadn't been shared by many people I doubt Merkel would have hung onto it.
20
Was Ms Merkel the faulty part on Greece ?
From the FT Jan 12, 2010
Greece condemned for falsifying data
Greece was condemned by the European Commission on Tuesday for falsifying data about its public finances and allowing political pressures to obstruct the collection of accurate statistics.
https://www.ft.com/content/33b0a48c-ff7e-11de-8f53-00144feabdc0
From the NY Times, May 11 , 2010
Because of their profligacy, Greeks have been living under this market scrutiny for so many months,
"George Papandreou, evinces an Obama-Zen-like calm. He is just back from meeting fellow European Union leaders, who decided to try to stave off a Greek meltdown and an E.U. crackup with a show of overwhelming force — committing nearly $1 trillion to support the economy of any ailing member state.
The only way for Greece to end this uncertainty was with an unprecedented commitment by the European Union to backstop Greek debts and with an unprecedented commitment by Greece to put its economy on a strict diet — set by the International Monetary Fund — with quarterly budget targets that Athens has to meet to receive additional support."
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/opinion/12friedman.html
Kindly note that the IMF set the conditions, not Ms. Merkel
24
Nobody is saying that the Greeks were not responsible for their own financial troubles. But if you think the German terms were not entirely designed to support German and French banks, who made many poor quality loans and who would have collapsed otherwise, you are not being honest. Almost none of the money loaned to Greece went to Greeks, it went right back to paying off the bailout loans...perpetuating a zombie state that lasts to this day. The Germans were able to force austerity on their neighbors while they continued to reap the reward and insured that the German government and banks lost nothing. Meanwhile, Greek assets were forced to be placed up for sale at fire sale prices. Interesting how Greece was forced to place 19 airports up for sale at one time and a German private firm eagerly bought them up for a song. Same for land, utilities, rail, etc. The result was a lost decade for everyone but Germany. Consider that Germany would not have prospered one bit since the early 2000's if it weren't for the euro, which de facto gave it a much more competitive currency than the Deutsch Mark ever was... Again, at the expense of the less productive southerners. And your comment is plainly stupid, people will migrate when it suits them to do so, not when forced to do so by the collapse of their own economy.
1
“...and the likely future chancellor of Germany.” The author misunderstands German politics. Th CDU may not be in a position to get their nominated candidate for chancellor elected in 2021. Certainly not, if Merkel leaves before that. The political situation is volatile and the CDU on a downward trajectory.
2
@Josh Eisen
Not quite sure what you mean.
The CDU/CSU has lost ground, but is still the top party according to all the recent polls. If the election were held today, they would seemingly get the most votes and the opportunity to form a coalition.
Am I missing something?
11
@John
Yes as you need 50% plus 1 vote in parliament to elect a Chancellor (there is the possibility of a minority-governmemt though after two weeks and at least 3 election-circles) and I have my doubt that the either the Social Democrats or the Greens would form a government lead by Friedrich Merz. (The economic-libertarian FDP instead would praise him, but if they would have a majority together, remains with the auguries
4
@JD Selig
Yes, it takes 50% +1 to elect the chancellor.
But my understanding is the party that gets the most votes, even if it's just a plurality, gets to form the coalition that eventually reaches 50+1.
For example, in the 2017 election, the CDU/CSU only won 32% of the vote, but eventually formed the coalition that elected Merkel.
2
Merkel, in an odd sense, like her east German compatriots, was herself a refugee immigrant into democratic West Germany. She and her fellow east Germans were welcomed. I like to think that she recognized that concept when the migrations from other authoritarian regimes caused them to flee from the vicissitudes of power-hungry madmen into Europe. The daughter of a vicar, she did not abandon the Christian imperatives that a previous notorious leader of Germany had done, with the acquiescence of the German people. For any and all of her political faults, she restored a semblance of decency to a Germany which the far rightists and populists would destroy again.
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@vincentgaglione But somehow she was quite willing to crush my Greek cousins in the name of austerity. Angela is no angel.
10
@Sasha Love...this is a complicated issue...but one thing is clear, your Greek cousins did not pay taxes yet kept spending...
4
I wonder if the author (or readers) understands that the word "liberal" in Europe means what it has always meant; i.e. free market, socially irresponsible capitalism. The Liberal Party in Austria and Germany is basically those countries' GOP.
Around the time of the New Deal, the word "liberal" in the US got perverted into meaning something like slo-go social democracy or goody two-shoes capitalism. But that is not what it means in Europe.
So it is not clear what the article means when it talks about Merkel's "liberal" legacy.
27
You're basically right. Most of today "liberal" parties a economic-libertarian in the US wording.
But there's also the meaning of "liberal" concerning societial measures (like the more left-leaning Liberal Democrats of Britain or though not in Europe the Canadian Liberals of Justin Trudeau).
In the sixties the CDU was somewhat reactionary and extreme conservative concerning things like the punishability of "encouragement of unmarried activities" or excessive caning at home and in school. Not to mention "these long-haired hippies with their hotten-tot-music! " sayings.
It was Social Dem. FDP governments in the 70s that changed all these things. But as these things became mainstream, together with a coalition-shift of the FDP to the CDU in 1982, they (the German liberal party) attracted mostly Thacherites and other "economic-liberals" as by the time nearly noone exept maybe AfD wanted to abolish personal freedoms anymore
3
Angela Merkel was wrong to impose austerity after the financial crisis that was ignited by the US. It caused unnecessary suffering in Greece, poverty and homelessness.
She was right to allow one million war refugees to enter the country. They were already in Europe and the smaller countries like Austria and Hungary were overwhelmed. But other countries like Turkey have done much more to accommodate the refugees. We also need to make clear that the US policies in the Middle East are to blame for the refugee crisis.
Chancellor Merkel was right to end nuclear power after the Fukushima meltdown. The current generation of nuclear reactors pose a risk that can’t be taken. She was wrong however to delay the end of coal.
These are the three topics historians will mostly debate.
Overall she introduced a new governing style of restraint, no-nonsense and humbleness. She paved the way for more women to seek elected office. That’s her lasting legacy.
23
@Oliver Herfort
She is proven to be right by imposing austerity.
She is clearly wrong on the million refugees in such an ad how manner. It would havre been ok to bring in a smaller number. It has created deep dissension within the country.
They did the same thing 40 years ago with Turkish workers
And that has worked out with mixed results at best.
11
@charles: you distort facts and you confuse them as well. The war refugees were already in Central Europe. They are not immigrants, they fled the war in Syria. Turkish migrants were invited as guest workers fifty years ago. Many stayed and continue to be productive members of society. The second and third generation assimilated. They can’t be compared to refugees.
3
She leaves a legacy that will not look so good over time.
Ask any German about the state of infrastructure in the country. On her watch, maintenance has been deferred. The military has been reduced to a shell of its Cold War capability. The last of the heartache involving the illegal migrants has yet to be seen. German banking has serious issues and yet another shoe has dropped with Deutsche Bank and it may prove to have a significant role in the Mueller investigation regarding Trump's finances.
With the EU facing an uncertain future the importance of a stable and solid German nation will be of paramount importance. I am not sure how a Germany with a diminished military, a troubled banking sector, an aging population and a decaying infrastructure steps into that role.
Trump has hurt the alliance between Europe and our nation and has weakened NATO. Even if Trump is out of office, one imagines that Germany and Europe will not ever again look at the US in the way it once did.
6
@David Gregory
If Germany has a "decaying" infrastructure then I am at a loss for words to describe the state of America's infrastructure. I was there recently and was quite impressed by the state of their roads, rail system, airports, etc., in comparison to what I experience and observe here in the Northeast.
19
@Fred Well some Germans comply on a high manner
2
@Fred
From a German Business News site:
"When Angela Merkel’s jet broke down last week en route to the G20 summit in Argentina, the chancellor ended up having to take a commercial flight. And Germany ended up with egg on its face.
The embarrassing incident served as a reminder of what international organizations have been telling Germany for years: Increase infrastructure spending, so as to reduce its surpluses and boost economic growth elsewhere.
German economists have long condemned an “investment backlog” which has given rise to creaky highway bridges, disintegrating waterways and shuttered swimming pools across the country. Statistics back up the criticism: Figures from the Ifo Institute for Economic Research suggest that over the last quarter of a century, the rate of public investment has steadily fallen below economic growth."
https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/plans-gone-awry-rich-country-poor-infrastructure/23710224.html?ticket=ST-4955589-5PPbChEFUdDnKKQmVqQK-ap2
Re : Immigrants
Ms. Merkel was the one who cleaned up after the US broke the pottery in the pottery barn.
The refugees taken in by Ms. Merkel were the result of American policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria , and Libya - and refused entry into the US. Even now, former translators to for the US forces in Afghanistan, need years of of clearance.
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@Gerhard No, that isn't true. The immigrants came because Europe incorrectly believed they were offering refuge to the desperate. Turned out, they were just economic immigrants coming from countries over populated because men refuse to user birth control or any level of self-regulation. The US did not break pottery; the US has actually done more good for billions around the world and whatever education taught you differently is a lie. There is no perfect country on the planet, but your disdain for the US suggests you should seek another home.
3
Merkel was great for Germany, and historically speaking it's preferable to have a prosperous Germany at the heart of Europe. However that prosperity clearly came at the expense of the Southern European countries, which have become vassal stares and whose economies haven't grown in over a decade. Merkel and Schaubel both showed an extreme lack of insight into how Germany needed to respond to the financial crisis in a Europe... It was all about protecting German banks from collapsing under the weight of all the bad loans they made. They failed the test of German leadership in Europe badly, especially by their eagerness to punish and isolate Greece and force the Greeks to endure 7 years running of economic depression. It's no coincidence that Italy has turned right as well. These countries are tired of watching Germany reap the benefit of the euro and grow while they remain stagnant.
10
@Andrew
germany ravaged greece in WWII, looted all the gold from the Greek Central Bank - never repaid - and had the gall to 'impose' austerity...the EU has worked ideally for germany, not so much for small economies. the estrangement felt by the greeks for germans will not be healed for years...
10
@Andrew It is true that in the euro basket, the Southern countries weighed down the Deutsche Mark, Gulden and other currencies which benefited the Northern euro zone countries, not in the least Germany. But the Southern countries could refinance and grow their debt at much lower interest rates. That was the bargain.
Moreover, the situation you describe is identical in the US: States like Mississippi are trapped in a strong dollar.
The Greeks are free to move and work in Germany, but unlike the Polish or Romanians many prefer to complain.
The whole austerity tale is fiction.
4
Wishing Germany good luck in facing the transition to a low-carbon economy without Merkel. The country can look to the US to see what's in store for them. The only viable political system to deal with climate change may be China's.
6
@Carol S.
Germany gets its energy from 60% non-polluting sources like wind and solar. I drive through Germany and see windmills on top of mountains and solar on many homes and in fields. Sadly it still has some coal and nuclear power but is working to eliminate same. Not an easy prospect. Yet when I drive through this area, and see new mega homes built here in Westchester or in the Hamptons, virtually none are built with solar panels, no wind power towers are visible. Only decorated old windmills charming to remind one of a bygone ear. These are homes for very wealthy owners who easily can afford these non-polluting energies and get credit for it. Shame on them for not investing in same.
13
Superb analysis. Merkel once warned her voters that Germany was becoming the America of Europe -- with the burdens and the insults which accompanied that role. Her Germany is not only the best Germany which has ever existed, it is also a model of what Europe could become. Sadly, that is not likely to happen.
79
A lot of the world's current mess has to do with the U.S. thinking that getting rid of Assad in Syria would be a good idea.
There were, and are, certainly problems with Assad in Syria, but messing around in the internal affairs of other nations, very foreign to us, places we don't know as well as we think we do... a doubtful project.
54
@David Martin Most did not even come from Syria! They were economic immigrants with strong roots in a religion that is NOT compatible with western ideals. But, maybe we should ask Obama and Hillary why they so loved the Arab Spring.
4
Merkel was the corporatist face of German dominance of the EU. Germany's response to the 2008 recession was to punish debtor countries(the prime example Greece) and bail out banks. The rise of the populist anger against the Merkel gov't is not just the racist fringe but sectors of the German populace, especially in the east, who have not benefitted like the west since reunification. And economic growth is slowing again.
22
@c harris
Perhaps Greece and Italy need to challenge their businesses to collect their share of taxes. Too much is cash transactions that has been hurting their country.
10
@c harris I believe you fail to realize that the southern EU countries have always been on the brink, were brought into the EU with a great deal of skepticism from France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the UK (rightly so) and a great deal of excitement from bankrupt countries that stood to pass their problems on to a suspecting conglomerate. These countries lied for decades about their cash flow and spending, expecting that the EU 'rich' countries would just pay for their largess. No, they didn't benefit as much from the 'reunification,' but then they would be in much worse shape today had they not be allowed to join.
5