COVER STORY

How Angela Merkel has dominated the EU time and again

by Dr Jan Werts*

On Thursday June 21, 2007, the meeting of the EU leaders, the Council, started at 17:54 am with ringing of the bell by Chancellor Angela Merkel. During the following 36-hour marathon, she opened her bag of tricks. In the atrium of the same building, 2,000 journalists from around the world waited impatiently for news. On the morning of June 23, while the sun was already rising over Brussels, a proud chancellor presented the press her ' Midsummer Night's Treaty ', the frame for the Lisbon Treaty on which the EU is still based today. Although in 2005 the ' European Constitution ' was rejected by French and Dutch voters, Merkel fully preserved with ‘her’ treaty the core of that constitution.

Like in 2007, the chancellor managed to pull the EU out of crises many times since then. But the Council meeting in June of this year was probably, after 16 years, the last one where Chancellor Angela Merkel represented Germany. She announced to step down after the German elections in September.

Her most important feat of arms!

1 - THE ' ONE TRILLION DOLLAR ' DEAL

In 2010, as the crisis caused by the Greek bankruptcy erupted, two-thirds of the Germans were against any financial aid for that country. Yet, Merkel opened, albeit after months hesitating, together with French President Nicolas Sarkozy that option. As the very existence of the euro was in danger! 'If the euro falls apart, Europe will fall apart,' Merkel warned.

The European Council then concluded the famous ' one trillion dollar ' deal (as the Americans called it). An unprecedented defense wall of 750 billion euros to keep the weak euro countries going. A government that could no longer serve its creditors could draw on it, provided it made significant austerity measures and necessary reforms of their economy. Germany alone took on roughly a quarter of the total burden. 2. EUROBONDS? 'NEVER!'

From 2010 on, Merkel had blocked the arrival of the so-called Eurobonds. These were advocated by the European Commission, the European Parliament and of course the leaders of debt-laden southern EU countries. Eurobonds would shift the repayment ultimately to the taxpayers in other EU countries.

"As long as I live there will be no Eurobonds" , said Merkel on June 26, 2012, to a disappointed Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, 'I don't believe in economic growth based on joint debt'.

But see, last year during the corona crisis, she suddenly gave up her resistance and made a complete U-turn on Eurobonds!

3. A ‘SIXPACK’ OF NEW LAWS

In spring 2011, Germany enforced six new EU laws (the so-called Sixpack ) to keep the euro on track. From that moment on there was a European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Merkel with support from the northern EU countries tightened the supervision of the governments that spent too much. The EU finance ministers lost their supervisory role. The so-called independent European Commission took over that role.

4. DOING BUSINESS WITH PUTIN

In the beginning of 2015, Merkel played the leading role in the negotiations with President Vladimir Putin about the war in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk II Agreement brought a ceasefire after sixteen hours of negotiations in the Belarusian capital.

This approach was a response to US suggestions to provide additional weapons to by Russia beleaguered Ukraine. But according to Merkel, who grew up in the DDR, that would actually make the crisis worse.

Remarkable detail: only after the signing in Minsk the EU came in the picture. Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko informed after the signing the other EU leaders. Merkel kept the official EU representatives Herman Van Rompuy and Federica Mogherini Merkel out of the negotiations in Minsk.

5. NO GREXIT AFTER ALL

In 2015, a Grexit threatened, a eurozone without the economically and financially fragile Greece. New heavy cuts and reforms were the starting point of the nightly deliberation on July 12.

While elsewhere in Brussels the other EU leaders were twiddling their thumbs, Merkel closed after seventeen hours haggling with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras a four-hundred-page agreement.

In exchange for new mega-support, Athens had to make huge cutbacks once again and also to downsize its enormous civil service. The evil Grexit dream, which would tarnish the image of the EU worldwide, was suddenly over. A nervous President Barack Obama had warned already Merkel and Tsipras for a global economic crisis.

6. CONTROVERSIAL EU-TURKEY DEAL

In March 2016, Merkel surprised her colleague EU leaders with a German-Turkish plan to contain the tsunami of migrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. She got her way again.

After a year of muddling through no fewer than twelve fruitless meetings, the European Council finally took the plunge. On Merkel's proposal, the flow of migrants that has become unsustainable, would be stopped at the Turkish border. The EU paid Ankara €6 billion for hosting about four million migrants and refugees.

Although often criticised because of violation of human rights, the recent intention of the Council is to extend the 'Merkel deal'.

7. TO A TRANSFER UNION

On July 21, 2020, EU leaders reached, after a marathon session of ninety hours, an agreement on the financing of the EU until 2027. Surprisingly, Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the French proposal to borrow 750 billion euro, on top of the normal spending, for a ‘COVID-19 Recovery Fund’. Three classic ‘German’ taboos suddenly disappeared: making joint large debts (the Eurobonds!); levying European taxes (to partially repay those debts) and shifting the financial burden from the EU to the next generations.

The EU is tackling the corona pandemic with mega-large subsidies (gifts, according to the critics). Germany has been adamantly against such support since decades, fearing the creation of a 'transfer union', where the money goes to countries with unsustainable deficits and often ends up in the wrong pockets.

8. BREXIT

In 2016, Merkel did literally nothing to keep the UK in the EU. During the decisive session of the Council, she was not even present. The story goes, that the chancellor walked out and went demonstratively to a Brussels chip shop to satisfy her hunger for €3.70.

Did Merkel (and President Emmanuel Macron) think that the UK would not leave? Here we see the lack of a longer-term vision of the Franco-German duo. The result of the British referendum has the EU deprived of its image of a united Europe. A disaster with historical consequences.

9. THE FRANCO-GERMAN TANDEM

Merkel has saved the EU from many a crisis. Why was she able to score again and again in the usually divided European Council? According to insiders, Merkel often knows her files better than many other EU leaders.

That gives her an edge. But a successful performance always required the approval of Paris. The chancellor has well cooperated with four French presidents: Chirac, Sarkozy, Hollande and now Macron. France and Germany together represent half of the economy of the nineteen eurozone countries. That counts!

The Franco-German couple also represents both the frugal European north and the more lavish 'garlic countries' in the south. Thus, a German-French proposal reflects what is maximally feasible between the EU-27. That is the deeper reason why Merkel has triumphed time and again with Paris. During Sarkozy's presidency, people even spoke of 'Merkozy'.

'The German chancellor often pushes her decisions across the council. After that, at a press conference, the

French president can explain exactly what has been decided’, characterised former Commission President Romano Prodi it once.

10. GERMAN SUPER THREE-SOME

With Angela Merkel, Germany sent its third top scorer to Brussels. Through the impatient co-founder of the European Council, chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982) and the far-sighted chancellor Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), the EU took shape: from 9 to 27 countries and from more than 20 national coins to one euro. And… over the past half century, this trio sealed the 'eternal peace' with former nemesis France.

© Jan Werts *Jan Werts

Jan Werts is a journalist and publicist and obtained his doctorate in 1991 with a dissertation on the European Council. He is the correspondent in Brussels for the Montesquieu Institute