Germany prepares to say goodbye to Angela Merkel
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, it’s Jeff and this is Plain English, where JR and I help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. Speaking of JR, he has uploaded the full and complete lesson to PlainEnglish.com/422.
Coming up today…Germany had an election in September, but it was only in late November that a new coalition government was formed. What was always known, however, was that Angela Merkel, the Chancellor for the last sixteen years, would step aside . In today’s lesson, we’ll talk about her biography and domestic accomplishments. On Thursday, we’ll talk about her legacy in Europe.
We have an expression today, too. That is “preside over” and we have a quote of the week. Let’s get going.
End of an era as Merkel’s Chancellorship draws to a close
Angela Merkel, the soft-spoken but resilient Chancellor of Germany, is preparing to bow out of Germany’s top job just as soon as a new government can be formed. Today is December 6; if all goes according to plan, today is Merkel’s last day as Chancellor. She has been Germany’s leader for four terms, dating back to 2005, and chose not to run in the national elections this fall. A new coalition government formed around the center-left Social Democratic Party, leaving Olaf Scholz to replace her as Chancellor.
When Merkel officially steps aside, whether today or in the coming days, it will close a long and consequential chapter in Germany’s and Europe’s history. The title of that chapter, when it is written, may very well be “Consensus,” for that is a word that defines her Chancellorship.
Her biography may have driven much of her approach to governing. She was born in Hamburg, then part of West Germany, but moved to Brandenburg state as an infant, then part of East Germany and a heavily controlled economy influenced by the Soviet Union. She studied for a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry and worked as a research scientist until she entered politics in 1989. She was elected to the Bundestag in the first democratic elections after Germany’s reunification in 1990 as a member of the Christian Democratic Union, the major center-right party in Germany.
Fifteen years later, she would take the helm as Chancellor and preside over a “grand coalition” government. In parliamentary systems, when no party has a majority of the seats, a coalition government forms, where multiple parties agree on a legislative agenda and on who holds key government posts. A “grand coalition” is a government formed by the two largest parties. That would be like the MBD and the PT in Brazil, or the Democrats and Republicans in America, trying to set aside their differences and agree on a unified agenda.
The advantage to such coalitions is that they command large majorities in a parliament, so they can easily get things done. The opposition also tends to be less fierce. The disadvantage is that the two largest parties often hold opposing viewpoints, so the coalition can be difficult to manage. Without a strong opposition, the coalition can get complacent.
Though Merkel and her party were successful for four terms and sixteen years, her party rarely won a convincing mandate for a strong center-right legislative agenda. As a result, Merkel presided over such “grand coalitions” for three of her four terms, meaning that her leadership was by necessity consensus-driven and slower-moving.
This was a good match for her skills. She was trained as an academic, not a partisan. Her personal history includes ties to both eastern and western states. She’s soft-spoken and values the truth and logical arguments.
Germany did well under Merkel. In her time as Chancellor, more women have joined the workforce, unemployment has been low, public debt is low, and most Germans say they are satisfied with their economic circumstances. Merkel is leaving office with high approval ratings, even if her party’s vote share has declined.
Not everything went well, however. Merkel decided to wind down Germany’s nuclear power industry after the Fukushima disaster in Japan; that has left Germany and Europe more reliant on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for natural gas and less able to reduce carbon emissions. Her budgets have been stingy even though borrowing costs have been low. Her decision to admit one million migrants in 2015, while compassionate, was poorly executed and eventually gave rise to a far-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany. Over time , her coalitions won smaller and smaller shares of the vote. So, even if Merkel herself was popular, the governments she led gradually became less so.
Still, Merkel’s greatest domestic legacy will be her ability to build consensus and competently preside over a wealthy, stable, and tolerant country for sixteen years. Think about all the upheaval in the world in the last sixteen years. Germany was a rock while much of the world convulsed. That shouldn’t be discounted.
However, the name Angela Merkel will not be known to history for her domestic accomplishments. It was in Europe that she, and especially her consensus-driven leadership style, were most needed. And that’s what we’ll talk about on Thursday.
A long time in government
Sixteen years is a long time for a single person, or even a single party, to oversee a government. Here in the U.S., the last time a single party held the White House for at least sixteen consecutive years was from 1933 to 1953. Typically, after so long, the talented people in the party in charge get burned out, the ideas get stale, the energy level falls.
On the one hand, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for Merkel to have taken more political risks, taken a stand, and potentially even lost one of the elections somewhere in there, rather than being so politically cautious and accommodating. But on the other hand, she was also Europe’s de-facto leader during this time, and a leader’s strength on the world stage is related to political strength at home. So, it’s possible she would not have had the same influence in Europe had she not had such strong majorities at home.
We’ll know more when her inevitable autobiography comes out in a few years.
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