A deepened disillusion with Germany

Financial Times
June 10, 2011

On Tuesday, on a balmy evening in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Angela Merkel looked happier and more relaxed than she has done for weeks.

No wonder. The German chancellor was sitting down to a state dinner in her honour, having just been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US civilian award, by Barack Obama. She was also a long way from Germany – and the European Union – where her reputation has lately taken a battering.

Europe’s most powerful leader, presiding over the continent’s biggest and strongest economy, is under pressure on the home front as seldom before. Regardless of her international reputation, Ms Merkel’s centre-right coalition government is on the defensive. It has slid badly in the polls and lost a string of local elections, arousing speculation that it may not hold together until the next federal election in 2013.

“If all were fair in the world – and especially in Germany – then Angela Merkel would be as beloved at home as she is honoured abroad,” Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily, wrote on Friday. “But the opposite is true.”

Yet it is not just at home that her halo is slipping. On a series of critical issues, from the financial crisis in the eurozone to nuclear energy, the German leader is facing charges from her European partners that she is pursuing an introspective national agenda at the expense of EU solidarity.

In Nato, where Germany is normally regarded as the most loyal of allies, Ms Merkel’s decision not to join in military action against Muammer Gaddafi in Libya has been greeted with dismay. Berlin’s abstention in the UN Security Council vote to impose a no-fly zone over Libya revived fears of Germany reverting to a semi-neutral, stay-at-home strategy that could undermine the alliance just when it is struggling to prove itself more relevant and effective.

Even good moments are short-lived. The chancellor had no time to relax and savour Mr Obama’s hospitality after her Apfelstrudel on Tuesday. By 10.30pm she was already mounting the steps of her aircraft to fly home and face a new round of political infighting in Berlin.

Within three hours of landing, she was in the committee rooms of the German parliament, forced to beg for support from both her own rebellious Christian Democrats and the even more truculent liberal Free Democrats – minority partners in her coalition – for a new package of financial assistance for Greece.

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