She has been widely seen as a steadying influence on the fractious bloc, the grown-up politician who could assuage and tamp down disputes, often finding a way out of seemingly intractable disputes between the 27 member states, frequently by delaying decisions or shelving them. She took the lead in foisting tough austerity measures on the indebted countries of southern Europe, while at the same time backing aid and loans for struggling EU member states.
Even Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister, who fought Merkel over the austere bailout terms Berlin forced on Athens, credits Merkel with saving the European currency. For some critics she has not been tough enough with Russia and has been too ready to allow profits and business to define relations with Beijing. While her push for austerity measures was well received in Germany, it led to a degree of cultural chauvinism among Germans towards the Greeks.
Euro-skeptic sentiment has also increased dramatically in Italy and Spain. It also fueled tensions and clashes with other EU member states, especially with nearby Central European countries, Poland, Austria and Hungary.
On Germany her record looks less mixed. Although her foes — and some Green lawmakers — have also pointed out that closing the power stations has meant Germany has had to resort to an excessive use of coal adding to greenhouse emissions. She has refused to be drawn, though roles as European council president or the secretary general of the UN have been mooted, not least because they will be available in As far as Athens is concerned, Merkel holds the purse strings, and that will be even more acutely felt if the left-wing Syriza party, with its promises to abandon debt and ignore austerity measures, wins the upcoming election.
Merkel has issued a thinly veiled warning that the eurozone could survive without Greece. Her insistence on imposing German-style austerity measures and reforms on the rest of Europe rather than giving in to constant pressures to flood the markets with ever more money won her few friends, particularly in southern Europe, but the steady hand she showed at a time of crisis saw her win praise and secured her huge support in Germany.
Without the crisis she might have been just like any other leader. Instead, the crisis has come to define her tenure. It also underlines the historical opportunity she still faces as it is far too early to make a verdict on her policies. First, she has to save the euro, the plight of which is far from over. The European project seems more endangered than at any other juncture and, therefore, is her biggest challenge.
It will be largely up to Merkel whether it fails or succeeds, which is why she has placed Europe firmly at the centre of the agenda of her third term. While most other European leaders were finished off by the financial crisis, Merkel has blossomed during it. She adroitly fended off a long-term recession in Germany at the time the global economic crisis hit by introducing economic stimulus packages and shortening working hours, whereby workers worked less but had their earnings topped up by the government rather than business.
Her future challenges will be to deal with underfunded public infrastructure, a flaccid education system and a lack of qualified workers, for which Germany will need immigrants — all of which could culminate to have a disastrous effect on the economy. So, for someone like her, she has an approach that is very factually based.
That's not the sort of thing that is barnstorming. But in her own sort of way, she has staged a bit of a revolution in German politics and world politics generally. At a time when politics has become more polarised, she's tried to depolarise them by depoliticising issues. Mrs Merkel has been proclaimed by Forbes as the most powerful woman in the world for 10 years running.
There is a whole generation in Germany that has never known anything other than a woman leader. Her position has been symbolically important for women's representation, and she is known for bringing women into key positions. For example, she supported Ursula von der Leyen, the first female German defence minister and European Commission president. The targeting of Muslim women and rallying against so-called gender madness is widespread in Germany, driven in part but not only by the far-right Alternative for Germany AfD party.
This election cycle, the issue of gender-appropriate language has become a politicised issue, over which Mrs Merkel has stayed largely silent. Her policy legacy is a somewhat bizarre mix of modernisation and backwardness. Many of the modernising features - such as same-sex marriage, phasing out nuclear energy, and welcoming immigration policies - would not be expected from a Christian Democratic chancellor. However, the country is almost grotesquely lagging behind on big, pressing issues like digitalisation, climate policy, and demographic change.
As Angela Merkel leaves office, the political landscape is much more volatile. This concerns, in part, the increasingly complex party system and the AfD, which thrives on anti-immigration sentiment. There is, of course, the simple fact that she was the country's first female chancellor.
I'm sure her pragmatic, quasi-presidential style of governing will serve as a role model for her successor, whoever it may be. Her legacy is a determined and silent one. Her leadership is based on sober evaluation and projecting reliability. She's always been criticised for not being a visionary.
But voters knew what they were getting with her. She is brilliant at reading the room and taking the temperature of the electorate. For that, she has earned a lot of trust from international partners. The other legacy that she leaves is that she liberalised the agenda of her party, the conservative Christian Democrats. She has moved the conservatives closer to the centre, and also closer to the left-wing Greens in certain aspects.
Matt Qvortrup : Her main legacy is rescuing the euro, and dealing with the financial crisis of I remember talking to her in Brussels at the time. In response to the crisis, she said she wanted as much market economics as possible, but as much state intervention as necessary.
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