That it seems far this year 2019, when the German leader, at the head of a grand coalition at the end of the day, seemed overwhelmed by the mobilization of youth for the climate.
Angela Merkel, elected Chancellor on November 22, 2005, celebrates her fifteenth year in power on Sunday with unmatched popularity.
Even a few months ago, she seemed to be won over by the erosion of power.
But her management of the epidemic in Germany has put the "stainless" chancellor back at the center of the game.
As a symbol of the twilight of her reign, Angela Merkel, 66, had suffered spectacular tremors during official ceremonies, raising questions about the ability of a Chancellor deemed "almost indefatigable" to complete her fourth and last term before his political retirement in September 2021.
Angela Merkel celebrates her fifteenth birthday at the head of Germany this Sunday >> https://t.co/MGEmviaeGG pic.twitter.com/tN0lvTJrOX
- Le Parisien Infog (@LeParisienInfog) November 22, 2020
Popularity at its zenith
But the coronavirus pandemic has completely reshuffled the cards and its popularity, which all European leaders would envy, is at its zenith.
More than 7 in 10 Germans say they are satisfied with their management of the epidemic.
Voices are even being raised in Germany to demand a fifth term, which the Chancellor has completely ruled out.
Next September, when she retires from politics, the first woman to lead Germany will have equaled Helmut Kohl's longevity record with sixteen years in power.
Faced with Covid-19, described by the Chancellor as the "biggest challenge" for Germany since the end of the Second World War, Angela Merkel, a scientist by training, achieved an almost faultless privilege privileging pedagogy and rational demonstrations lyrical postures.
Fewer cases of Covid-19 and fewer deaths than its European neighbors
The confinement, which reminded Merkel of her life in the former GDR, was, by her own admission, "one of the most difficult decisions" in fifteen years in power.
Germany has recorded fewer cases and deaths than its European neighbors, despite a second virulent wave this fall and sometimes difficult negotiations with the regions.
POWERFUL WOMAN.
"It's a strong message for all women and certainly for some men too."
On November 22, 2005, Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor of Germany.
At 11 am, the Bundestag is standing and with these words, the President of the German Parliament congratulates it.
pic.twitter.com/LC5KFz8c48
- Ina.fr (@Inafr_officiel) November 21, 2020
The pandemic and its dramatic economic and social consequences have also delivered a new demonstration of the pragmatism of what the Germans affectionately nickname "Mutti".
Champion of European austerity after the financial crisis of 2008, at the risk of suffocating Greece, Angela Merkel converted in the spring to European fiscal stimulus and debt pooling, the only ones able, according to her, to save the project European.
In 2011, it was the Fukushima nuclear disaster that convinced her in a few days to initiate Germany's gradual withdrawal from nuclear energy.
"We'll get there!"
But her historic risk-taking came in the fall of 2015, when Angela Merkel decided to open her country to hundreds of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi asylum seekers.
Despite public concerns, she promises to integrate and protect them.
"We will get there!", She says.
Perhaps the most striking sentence pronounced in power by the chancellor, reluctant to inflamed speeches.
Until then, this doctor in chemistry who still bears the name of her first husband and has no children had always cultivated an image of a cautious, even cold woman, without roughness, loving potatoes, opera and music. hiking.
To explain its historic decision on migrants, taken without really consulting its European partners, it had evoked its "Christian values" and a certain duty of exemplarity of a country which bears the responsibility for the Holocaust.
This Christian charity, that which was born under the name of Angela Kasner, takes it from her father, a pastor who voluntarily left to live with all his family in East Germany, communist and atheist, to preach the gospel.
But the migratory crisis worries, the fear of Islam and terrorist attacks are taking hold, and the conservative electorate is turning in part towards the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
A post-war taboo was broken when in September 2017, the far-right formation made a historic entry into Parliament.
"Leader of the free world"
However, she has always assumed her decision and, after the Donald Trump earthquake and Brexit, the media and politicians proclaim her "leader of the free world" in a context of rising populism.
Barack Obama, one of the four American presidents she has known since 2005, describes her in her Memoirs as a "reliable, honest, intellectually precise" leader, a "beautiful person".
The "Teflon chancellor", on whom the problems slide, remains a political animal, as singular as it is formidable, that the big names of contemporary Germany have almost all underestimated.
In 2000, she took advantage of a financial scandal within her party to take the CDU (Christian Democratic Union of Germany).
The debutante without charisma then doubles all the male hierarchs.
On September 18, 2005, it was against the social democratic chancellor Gerhard Schröder that she had snatched the electoral victory, on the wire, arousing the incredulity of her opponent.
Fifteen years later, she is still in charge, without really having prepared her succession.
With AFP
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