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ANGELA MERKEL

Opposition: ‘EU should ratify pact on same day’

Germany's two main opposition parties called on Wednesday for the EU's fiscal pact to be ratified on the same day in Berlin, Paris and Rome, seeking to send a strong signal of unity against the crisis.

Published: 10 May 2012 08:26 CEST
Opposition: 'EU should ratify pact on same day'
Photo: DPA

In a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel – the architect of the pact, which aims to tighten budgetary discipline in Europe – the Greens welcomed an Italian proposal to ratify the text simultaneously as a “European signal.”

“We suggest you also synchronise with France and propose this to the newly elected French president,” the Greens wrote.

“The Franco-German friendship was and is the motor of European integration. Close cooperation on this topic seems to us to be particularly important,” the letter concluded.

Last week, Merkel’s spokesman said the chancellor would welcome a simultaneous ratification in Italy and Germany.

The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s main opponents, also called for a joint ratification.

“Joint action in France and Germany would be very welcome,” Michael Roth, the SPD’s spokesman on European affairs, told news agency AFP.

Merkel needs a two-thirds majority in parliament to pass the fiscal pact, which she signed in March, and therefore needs opposition support.

The SPD has echoed calls from French President-elect Francois Hollande to place more emphasis on growth in the fiscal pact.

Negotiations in Germany over the text were due to begin next week.

The government wants the ratification to take place before parliament breaks for its summer recess, which begins on July 6 at the latest.

On the same day, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble insisted that Greece must stick to a March deal agreed with its international backers and enact promised reforms to remain within the eurozone.

If Greece wants to remain in the eurozone, there is no better solution than the path it has already taken,” Schäuble said, referring to austerity cuts and reforms in return for a €240-billion debt bailout.

“You can’t have one without the other,” he added.

The Greeks need “to form a stable government and strictly respect their commitments, in the same way that we will respect our obligations to Greece,” Schäuble said, echoing earlier comments by Merkel.

He spoke as Athens scrambled to put together a government after a general election Sunday failed to produce a clear winner, dealing a blow to the outgoing Pasok-New Democracy coalition that struck the bailout deal March 9 with the International Monetary Fund and European Union.

“A vast majority in Greece want at all cost to stay in the euro because the Greeks appear to have understood the advantages of a common currency, despite the constraints,” Schäuble said.

“It is up to Greece to decide,” he added at a conference in Brussels. “We don’t need to discuss a plan B.”

AFP/bk

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POLITICS

Sleep, seaside, potato soup: What will Merkel do next?

 After 16 years in charge of Europe's biggest economy, the first thing Angela Merkel wants to do when she retires from politics is take "a little nap". But what about after that?

Published: 5 December 2021 17:31 CET
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes and smiles at a 2018 press conference in Berlin.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes at a 2018 press conference in Berlin. Aside from plans to take "a little nap" after retiring this week, she hasn't given much away about what she might do next. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

The veteran chancellor has been tight-lipped about what she will do after handing over the reins to her successor Olaf Scholz on December 8th.

During her four terms in office, 67-year-old Merkel was often described as the most powerful woman in the world — but she hinted recently that she will not miss being in charge.

“I will understand very quickly that all this is now someone else’s responsibility. And I think I’m going to like that situation a lot,” she said during a trip to Washington this summer.

Famous for her stamina and her ability to remain fresh after all-night meetings, Merkel once said she can store sleep like a camel stores water.

But when asked about her retirement in Washington, she replied: “Maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will start to close because I’m tired, so I’ll take a little nap, and then we’ll see where I show up.”

READ ALSO: ‘Eternal’ chancellor: Germany’s Merkel to hand over power
READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

‘See what happens’
First elected as an MP in 1990, just after German reunification, Merkel recently suggested she had never had time to stop and reflect on what else she might like to do.

“I have never had a normal working day and… I have naturally stopped asking myself what interests me most outside politics,” she told an audience during a joint interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

“As I have reached the age of 67, I don’t have an infinite amount of time left. This means that I want to think carefully about what I want to do in the next phase of my life,” she said.

“Do I want to write, do I want to speak, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I’ve decided to just do nothing to begin with and see what happens.”

Merkel’s predecessors have not stayed quiet for long. Helmut Schmidt, who left the chancellery in 1982, became co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a popular commentator on political life.

Helmut Kohl set up his own consultancy firm and Gerhard Schroeder became a lobbyist, taking a controversial position as chairman of the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

German writer David Safier has imagined a more eccentric future for Merkel, penning a crime novel called Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark  that sees her tempted out of retirement to investigate a mysterious murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel forms her trademark hand gesture, the so-called “Merkel-Raute” (known in English as the Merkel rhombus, Merkel diamond or Triangle of Power). (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
 

Planting vegetables
Merkel may wish to spend more time with her husband Joachim Sauer in Hohenwalde, near Templin in the former East Germany where she grew up, and where she has a holiday home that she retreats to when she’s weary.

Among the leisure activities she may undertake there is vegetable, and especially, potato planting, something that she once told Bunte magazine in an interview in 2013 that she enjoyed doing.

She is also known to be a fan of the volcanic island of D’Ischia, especially the remote seaside village of Sant’Angelo.

Merkel was captured on a smartphone video this week browsing the footwear in a Berlin sportswear store, leading to speculation that she may be planning something active.

Or the former scientist could embark on a speaking tour of the countless universities from Seoul to Tel Aviv that have awarded her honorary doctorates.

Merkel is set to receive a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros ($16,900) in her retirement, according to a calculation by the German Taxpayers’ Association.

But she has never been one for lavish spending, living in a fourth-floor apartment in Berlin and often doing her own grocery shopping.

In 2014, she even took Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to her favourite supermarket in Berlin after a bilateral meeting.

So perhaps she will simply spend some quiet nights in sipping her beloved white wine and whipping up the dish she once declared as her favourite, a “really good potato soup”.

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