After 16 years of what seems like near-constant crisis, Merkel, who is also the first chancellor to have been raised in eastern Germany, is stepping down with public approval ratings of around 65 percent. “Everyone is trying to portray themselves as Merkel,” says political scientist and foreign policy specialist Marcel Dirsus. From the financial crisis, euro crisis, refugee crisis, the resurgent populism of Brexit, Donald Trump, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), and finally the coronavirus pandemic as well as catastrophic flooding this summer – the Merkel Era has hardly been a golden age. “She misunderstood the euro crisis as a debt crisis when it was so much more than that,” he says. Does Merkel have a signature policy the way Kohl had the euro or Gerhard Schröder had labour market reforms?

Source: The Local September 13, 2021 10:18 UTC