Even the heads of state and government of the EU no longer seem to have any doubts that Germany will have a new chancellor by their next summit in December.
That is why they have already said goodbye to the head of government, who has influenced the course of things in the EU longer and more effectively than anyone else in their ranks.
Not everyone weeps after her as loudly as Council President Michel, who compared her to the Eiffel Tower.
But Merkel's services to the project of European unification must also be recognized in Athens, Budapest and Warsaw.
In the interests of Germany
The Chancellor fought for its survival without the pathos with which Helmut Kohl advocated the European idea. But Merkel also acted out of the conviction that an economically and politically united Europe as much as possible is in the very interests of the great state in the middle of the continent. Like Kohl, Merkel saw the role of the Federal Chancellor in European politics as that of a driving force and honest broker. In her later years, as in domestic politics, she shifted more and more to moderation. That too was a demand for the whole woman, as the Member States disagreed on important issues. But once “the compromise machine” failed: In the course of the refugee crisis, Merkel's policy widened the gap running through the EU. It has not yet been filled in.To the right and left of it there are even new fault lines.
The EU - just an ATM?
Tasks that are not easy to solve await the new Federal Chancellor in Brussels either.
The central question, the answer to which the future fate of the project depends, is: What should the European Union be?
A community of values?
A Federal State?
Just an ATM?
The fact that the EU is staggering from one crisis to the next is due to the fact that ideas about its “finality” diverge widely - even further than the European political positions of the SPD, FDP and the Greens.