GermanyWho is Angela Merkel?
Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany as the daughter of a Lutheran pastor and worked as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences, without joining the ruling SED. She entered politics in 1989 through the Democratic Awakening movement, joined the CDU in 1990 and served under Helmut Kohl as minister for women and youth and then for the environment. During the party donations scandal of 1999 she publicly urged the CDU to break with Kohl, and she became party leader in 2000. She was chancellor from 2005 to 2021, leading three Grand Coalitions with the SPD and one coalition with the FDP. She is retired from politics and holds no office.
Political views
Presided over the 1995 UN climate conference in Berlin, which adopted the Berlin Mandate on reducing greenhouse gases.
Source: hdg.dePromoted a privileged partnership with Turkey as an alternative to full EU membership.
Source: hdg.dePressed for budget discipline in the euro crisis, including the 2010 savings package and the 2012 European fiscal compact with its debt brakes.
Source: hdg.deDecided in 2011, after Fukushima, to shut down all German nuclear power plants by 2022 and expand renewable energy.
Source: hdg.deAdmitted refugees stranded in Hungary in 2015 and said "Wir schaffen das" (we can do this); nearly one million asylum seekers arrived that year.
Source: hdg.deBacked the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement and the 2018 EU decision to tighten asylum policy.
Source: hdg.deHer government suspended military conscription in 2011.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Legacy
Admirers credit Merkel with steady crisis management through the 2008 financial crash and the euro crisis, with keeping the EU together and with a humane response to refugees, for which Time named her Person of the Year in 2015. Critics in southern Europe blamed her austerity demands for deepening recessions, and critics in Germany argued that the 2015 refugee policy was poorly prepared and divided society. Since 2022 her Russia policy has drawn the strongest criticism: she backed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and critics say her governments left Germany heavily dependent on Russian gas and its armed forces underfunded.