October 20, 2011
German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be risking her 2013 bid for a third term with a bet on expanding the effort to save the euro.
Merkel may endorse policies unpopular with her Christian Democratic voters at an Oct. 23 European summit, bowing to world leaders including President Barack Obama to do more to stem the debt crisis that began in Greece and is now rattling core economies such as Italy and France.
“Merkel’s next step is to convince voters,” Giles Merritt, head of the Friends of Europe research group in Brussels, said in a telephone interview. “The German media have been hammering away in a tabloid manner on the idle Greeks and this has gone deep into the German psyche.”
Failure to make her case to the electorate means Merkel may face the political hara-kiri of her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. The Social Democrat alienated core supporters with his “Agenda 2010” package of tax and benefits cuts that subsequently fueled the German economy and still led to his downfall. Germany’s next election will probably be held in September 2013.
“This is very much an Agenda 2010 moment for Merkel, but it’s much bigger than what Schroeder faced,” Jan Techau, director of the Brussels-based European center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview.
Techau said that while the sluggish economy Schroeder confronted was easier to explain to voters, “it’s far harder for Merkel” to demystify the Greek and European banking crises.
“Merkel’s the target of public anger about Greece and the bailouts even though all other major German parties, including the opposition, back her on this,” Techau said.
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