Europe's iron lady triumphs

Helmut Kohl, former German chancellor once patronised her as ‘mein Madchen' (my girl); Nicolas Sarkozy sneers at her privately as ‘la Boche' (the French equivalent of ‘Jerry' or ‘Kraut'); Silvio Berlusconi makes obscene remarks about her to his editors. This week, however, it wasn't the Continental chauvinists who had the last laugh: it was Angela Merkel.

The German chancellor dominated the European stage as no woman has done since Margaret Thatcher. The two could hardly differ more, either in personality or politics. In the perpetual negotiation machine that is the European Union, Merkel excels at getting her way while treating the male egos around her as gently as possible.

She does not relish humiliating her more improvident relations, but she is determined not to be the rich aunt left with the bill at the end of the meal. British Prime Minister David Cameron gets on better with Merkel than some of his hand-kissing counterparts, who bow and scrape to her face, while sniping behind her back. The German chancellor and Cameron have come a long way since their first encounters, which were reportedly frosty. She took him for a typical Tory eurosceptic; he underestimated her. But she has come to appreciate him since he took office, especially his determination to make Britain live within its means, which mirrors her own approach to the crisis. For his part, Cameron has grown to admire Merkel as the high mistress of austerity. She is delighted that he is content to leave her a free hand within the Eurozone to pursue closer fiscal and political unity, as long as Britain is equally free to stay out.

Merkel has learnt much from the experience of living under communism for her first 35 years, and also from what happened to her native East Germany after reunification, when it was given the benefit of the Deutschmark years before the experiment of currency union was tried on a European scale.

Pragmatist

The Federal Republic has been bailing out its own eastern provinces for over two decades. Anyone who doubts that Merkel is in earnest when she tells her parliament that Europe faces ‘its gravest crisis since the Second World War' should remember how the Germans have honoured that commitment to their own people.

How committed, though, are they to doing the same for other nations in the Eurozone with whom they may feel they have rather less in common, and whose ingratitude is palpable? This is where Merkel's uncharismatic style really pays dividends. To post-war Germans, the very concepts of ‘leadership' and ‘nation' are suspect. Not only is she the first East German and the first female chancellor, she is also the first to be born after the war. She carries no historical baggage, and that suits most Germans. They also like the fact that she is a matriarch in a patriarchal society.

Of course, Merkel is also a pragmatist. Earlier this year, she reversed her long-standing support for nuclear power by pledging to phase it out completely.

The Protestant work ethic is evident in her steely sense of duty, while the scientific precision with which she approaches problems such as the rescue of the euro is impressive.

What was agreed recently is not a solution, but Merkel has ‘done what was necessary'. In effect, Greece is defaulting on most of its debt, with Germany ensuring that creditors get a soft landing. Yet she is no soft touch: the relief of the markets showed that German largesse had gone as far as was necessary — but no further. Merkel's mastery of detail has merely granted the euro a reprieve. The French, Italians and British, not to mention the smaller states, resent the Germans throwing their weight about, while the dispatch of a German emissary to China, cap in hand, symbolises the fact that all Merkel's powers of persuasion cannot alter the fact that the euro is structurally unsound.

Merkel has warned against a return to past conflict if Europe's ‘existential crisis' ends with the collapse of the single currency. Yet even if old fears and animosities are resurfacing, they are unfounded. If anybody can save the euro, she can, but even if she fails, today's Germans are pacific to a fault. Merkel is the face of modern Germany, and it is as friendly a face as we could reasonably hope for.

Daniel Johnson is the Editor of Standpoint.