Germany: fifteen years in power for Chancellor Angela Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been in power for 15 years, a record of political longevity in the country.

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11 min

It was November 22, 2005. Two months after the general elections, Angela Merkel was elected for the first time Chancellor at the head of a grand coalition.

At the time, no one would have bet on the longevity and popularity of the new German leader. 

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From our correspondent in Berlin

,

On September 18, 2005, when the polling stations close and the estimates appear on the screens, a cold shower descends on the conservatives led by

.

All the polls carried out a few days earlier gave the CDU and its Bavarian ally CSU more than 40% of the vote.

On arrival, with 35.2%, the two parties have to be content with a historically low score.

And the outgoing chancellor, the social democrat Gerhard Schröder, largely left behind before the poll, has raised his handicap and is almost on par with the conservatives, 34.2%.

In the new parliament, CDU-CSU have only four seats more than their opponents.

On election night, the Germans who follow the traditional round table with the party leaders, discover a self-confident and smiling Gerhard Schröder, excluding Angela Merkel from succeeding him in the chancellery.

The person concerned looks crestfallen. 

The parliamentary tradition is finally respected.

The force with the largest group in the Bundestag obtains a mandate to form a government.

Upon arrival, only a grand coalition involving the Christian Democratic Union and the SPD is possible.

This is the second time in the history of the FRG that such a constellation has emerged.

Angela Merkel was elected on November 22, 2005 with a large majority by the Bundestag even though 51 deputies defected from her. 

A first election with a strong symbolic charge

It is the first time since the founding of the country in 1949 that a woman has been elected head of government.

The election of the new chancellor is also a symbol for the country reunified fifteen years earlier with the coming to power of an East German woman.

This designation crowns a political career that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Angela Merkel, active in a new party created in the late GDR, is promoted to deputy spokesperson for the last East German Prime Minister, the only one to have been democratically elected.

Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel in 2000, on the 10th anniversary of German reunification.

REUTERS / Michael Urban

After reunification, she became minister in Helmut Kohl's government, for Youth and then for the Environment and remained in business for eight years.

When her father in politics retired, beaten by Gerhard Schröder in 1998, Angela Merkel became secretary general of the CDU.

Two years later, she took the leadership of the party while the movement was on the ground after the revelations on the case of the slush funds set up by Helmut Kohl.

The one that the former chancellor called " 

 ", " 

 ", allows herself what no male would ever have dared.

In a resounding article, she knocks down the Commander's statue and believes the page must be turned on the Kohl era. 

For this traditionally male, conservative, West German and predominantly Catholic party, it is a revolution.

A woman from the East, daughter of a Protestant pastor, without children, who had only "regularized" her free union with her companion, the very discreet chemist Joachim Sauer, two years earlier, took the leadership of the party.

At the time, the caciques of the CDU viewed with a skeptical eye the newcomer perceived as a UFO and a transitory solution.

Angela Merkel lacks a foundation within the movement.

In 2002, she preferred to leave the hand to the CSU for the race for the chancellery.

Bavarian Edmund Stoiber is nominated by the Conservatives and comes close to victory.

A record of political longevity in Germany

When Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor three years later, no one could imagine that she would equal Helmut Kohl's record for political longevity by remaining in power for fifteen years in four legislatures, which she would be named a dozen times as the most powerful woman in the world by

magazine

 and as the last " 

 " after the election of Donald Trump four years ago.

On the international scene, Vladimir Putin is one of the rare heavyweights to have a longer life in power than Angela Merkel.

The Chancellor has worked in fifteen years with four different French presidents and Joe Biden will also be the fourth White House guest with whom she will collaborate in a few weeks.  

After fifteen years, what conclusions can we draw?

If Willy Brandt was, in the early 1970s, associated with

, the policy of detente with the Communist GDR and the Soviet Union, if Helmut Kohl went down in history as a great European and

, if Gerhard Schröder was the father of important social reforms, it is difficult to find a great design for Angela Merkel.

A chancellor of crises 

Poor orator, moderator at heart, little follower of lyrical outings and champion of step by step advances, this lack of vision also corresponds to the temperament of the person concerned.

Angela Merkel, on the other hand, was a chancellor of the crises during which she avoided too severe upheavals in her country.

European issues will have counted a lot.

When she came to power, the Netherlands and France rejected the draft European Constitution.

We have to find an alternative.

And from the fall of 2008, the financial and then economic crisis hit.

Later, the euro zone is under tension;

the exit of Greece is not excluded.

Merkel imposes herself by her negotiating skills and her endurance during the Brussels marathons.

It was also the time when Germany did not have a good press abroad.

It is criticized for leaning on the principles of rigor which founded its model after the war and for being without empathy for the countries of southern Europe.

Merkel's popularity abroad suffers;

she gets a new nickname " 

 ".

The agreement reached with Paris and then the other partners in the spring for a European fiscal stimulus and a pooling of debts constitutes a historic turning point.

The Chancellor becomes essential on other international issues.

During the invasion of Crimea, the most serious crisis since the intervention of the USSR in Czechoslovakia in 1968, she is on the front line and negotiates entire nights alongside François Hollande with Vladimir Poutine and Ukrainian officials.

Despite their difficult relationship, she remains an interlocutor of the Kremlin guest with whom she can speak in Russian;

speaks German to him.

Merkel plays VRP many times to promote German companies in China.

When Beijing officials are in Europe, Berlin has a higher priority for them than Brussels.

The waltz of limousines in front of the chancellery makes you dizzy. 

Nicknamed 

In all these crises, Angela Merkel, nicknamed by many “ 

”, “  

 ”, becomes in a way the mother of the nation and gives the Germans the impression of being in good hands whom we can trust and who them. will protect from the ravages of the world.

Election campaigns are personalized.

" 

" affirms the person concerned to her fellow citizens in 2013. A huge poster near the chancellery just shows Angela Merkel's hands with her favorite pose, a sort of diamond.

A personalization that has nothing to do with monarchy.

Angela Merkel keeps her looks simple, goes to help herself at the hotel buffet during European summits, and is seen shopping in Berlin. 

The mother side of the nation goes hand in hand with the political style of the Chancellor more in moderation and dialogue than in solitary action.

A style that flourishes in a grand coalition based on negotiation and consensus.

Three of Merkel's four legislatures will have been led by such governments, with the exception of the second where an alliance between Christian Democrats and Liberals ruled the country between 2009 and 2013.

Strong decisions, taken in a hurry

Angela Merkel, known to take decisions at length can also surprise and decide quickly.

This is the case after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when the complete abandonment of nuclear power was decided in a few days when the same government had just extended the life of existing plants.

This is also the case for the suspension of conscription which transforms the Bundeswehr into a professional army. 

Another urgent decision would mark the Merkel era, that in early September 2015 not to close the borders when hundreds of thousands of refugees flock.

“ 

 ”, “ 

”: the Chancellor's phrase has

in history.

She is acclaimed by some for her empathy and humanistic decision;

others accuse him of driving the country to ruin.

The image of " 

 " is scratched;

the maternal figure supposed to protect the Germans from external dangers pales.

For some, Angela Merkel let the wolf enter the peaceful German sheepfold protected until then by the patress Angela.

During the last electoral campaign, its meetings are heckled.

Hatred is emerging.

At the same time, the AfD is

.

The far-right party entered the Bundestag in 2017 and gradually entered all regional parliaments.

Merkel is seen by some as responsible for the success of the far-right, which has been in decline for a year. 

Exceptional popularity after 15 years in power

Germany in 2020 is a country more divided than in 2005. The

since the spring against measures to combat Covid-19 with unprecedented verbal and violent excesses also reflect this development. 

But Angela Merkel " 

 " to this same pandemic is reaching

spectacular

levels of

, 74% in a recent poll.

His support among the population has always been high, but such a score, fifteen years after coming to power, can only make many of his counterparts green with envy.

Periods of crisis benefit the executive and this has also been true since the end of last winter.

The current pandemic is for the Chancellor the most serious crisis in post-war Germany. 

Beyond that, the current popularity of Angela Merkel and the government has revived the CDU in the polls.

The many comments last year on the attrition of power and possible early elections seem a long way off.

The Chancellor's party is very likely to lead the next government to be elected in autumn 2021. Angela Merkel left the party leadership two years ago and left behind a deeply modernized CDU.

The personality of its former president symbolized this evolution.

The CDU has some Copernican revolutions behind it: the family policy embodied in the early years by the current president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen promotes the work of women and the development of nurseries;

conscription was abolished;

immigration is no longer a concept foreign to the Conservatives;

homosexuals have made careers within the party like the Minister of Health Jens Spahn;

the number of women in leadership positions within the CDU has increased  

Angela Merkel has announced that she will not run again next year.

She will therefore step down from power in the fall of 2021. Until then, the fight against the pandemic will remain at the heart of her action and her legacy, the final outcome of which remains to be done.

The fact that he has already been asked several times whether his decision to leave power was irrevocable seems to suggest a nostalgia before its time.  

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