Who will lead Europe after Merkel steps aside?
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, I’m Jeff and this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. This is lesson number 423 and JR has uploaded the full lesson to PlainEnglish.com/423.
Coming up today… Angela Merkel’s legacy in Europe. We talked about her biography and domestic accomplishments on Monday, but the biggest impact of her tenure has been in the European Union. In the second part of the lesson, we’ll review the phrasal verb “step aside” and JR has a song of the week. Let’s jump in.
Merkel’s legacy in Europe
Angela Merkel, Germany’s center-right Chancellor for the last sixteen years, stepped aside in favor of a new Chancellor and a new governing coalition. Merkel chose not to compete in this fall’s national elections. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union, suffered a poor showing at the polls and did not factor in the new coalition government.
On Monday, we talked about Merkel’s domestic legacy within Germany . But her impact as Chancellor was more widely felt in Europe. While she was Chancellor, the EU experienced several major crises. It survived them all—barely . No European leader, at the national or EU level, was more influential in holding Europe together by a shoestring than Angela Merkel.
For a bit of context, the European Union is an unruly collection of 27 national governments, ranging from wealthy Luxembourg to the much poorer Bulgaria. It’s governed by a thicket of treaties and agreements that often give even a single member state the ability to veto a decision. Most of its institutions are consensus-based, meaning that for most issues, the EU moves at the pace of the slowest member.
The EU’s motto is, “United in Diversity.” During trying times, though, the EU has been more diverse than united. And there were many trying times during Merkel’s term as Chancellor.
First, the global financial crisis of 2008 exposed serious financial weaknesses in some member countries, such as Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain. The EU and the euro were at real risk of falling apart. To solve the crisis, the EU had to decide how to use the money of richer members, like Germany, to prevent a collapse in more spendthrift countries like Italy and Greece. The more industrious nations, the savers, didn’t love providing emergency loans and bailouts to the more spendthrift nations. Not to mention, the less stable countries didn’t appreciate the harsh strings attached to that help.
Ultimately, Merkel was the driving force behind the compromise that held Europe together. The saying goes, a compromise is successful when nobody is happy with the result. Trust me, nobody was happy with this result, least of all Greece, which suffered a long recession as a result . But Europe held together, and it was Merkel who used her influence to manage the crisis. Even many Greek leaders now admit that the punishing compromise probably saved the euro currency.
Another crisis popped up when Britain stunned the world and voted to leave the EU. This was not just a Britain problem, it was a European problem, too. The trick for Europe was to punish Britain enough so that no other member would want to follow, but also not totally ruin the relationship with an economically vital trading partner. This was a problem well suited to Merkel’s strengths; she held firm in many areas and compromised in a few others. By the time Britain officially limped out of the EU in 2020, no other member states wanted to go through that ordeal.
Merkel led Europe through other crises too. Europe has long been the destination of choice for migrants from the Middle East and Africa fleeing war and oppression at home. Migrants pass through border states like Turkey or even arrive on boats in Italy and Greece. In 2015, Merkel made the decision to welcome over a million refugees to reaffirm Europe’s identity as a tolerant and welcome place, despite the political cost at home.
Finally, during COVID-19, her last international crisis, Merkel led the way for the European Union as a whole to issue and back debt. Prior to this crisis, individual European countries had to raise and guarantee their own debt if they wanted to spend more than what they collected in taxes. Germany, which has long been fiscally conservative, preferred this approach. To put it simply, German savers didn’t want to have to bail out less cautious nations whenever they spent too much.
But Merkel eventually brought her reluctant country around to supporting common European debt. Early in the coronavirus pandemic, Europe took the unprecedented step to borrow money that could be spent giving relief where it was most needed. The debt would be guaranteed and paid back by Europe as a whole, not by any one member state. This was an act of European solidarity that would scarcely have been imaginable early in Merkel’s term. By the time the coronavirus hit, Germany had come to accept that its own health and security was tied up with Europe’s wellbeing. That change in attitude can be attributed to Merkel’s steady and competent European leadership over the years.
Merkel’s critics say that she saved Europe as it lurched from crisis to crisis, but that she didn’t use her leadership to make durable changes that would prevent crises in the future. There may be some truth to that, but I think that criticism is a bit harsh. She was not the president of Europe. Nobody appointed or elected her leader of Europe; she was the elected leader of one of 27 EU countries. She didn’t have any power other than her ability to persuade, cajole, and build compromise inside the EU’s interminable institutions.
A reluctant fourth term
The story goes that when Trump was elected, Barack Obama went to Europe and told Angela Merkel, congratulations, you are now in charge of holding the liberal world order together. And, again the story goes, that she hadn’t wanted a fourth term in office, but that she ran for it anyway because she didn’t want to leave a power vacuum in Europe just as Trump was coming to power in the U.S.
Great stories make learning English fun
