‘Radical solutions’: what Angela Merkel’s departure means for the EU

Europeans are hoping that Germany will abandon “Merkelism” and adopt a more radical approach to solving the EU’s problems after of the country’s next chancellor is appointed later this month, according to a new study.

As Angela Merkel prepares to step down after 16 years in Germany’s top job, “many Europeans accept her country as the EU’s leader”, said The Guardian. But research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) suggests that people across the bloc want Germany to ditch her “neutral” position towards the crisis-hit continent.

“Angela Merkel has come to embody a strong and stable Germany, positioning herself as Europe’s anchor though more than a decade of crises,” study co-author Piotr Buras told the paper. “But ‘Merkelism’ is no longer sustainable.”

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The outgoing German leader has “adroitly managed the status quo across the continent”, he said, but “the challenges that Europe faces now - the pandemic, climate change, geopolitical competition - require radical solutions, not cosmetic changes. The EU needs a visionary Germany.”

‘Golden age over’

The study, based on polling in 12 EU member states, found “strong and continued” support for German leadership within the bloc and widespread approval for Merkel.

Of a total 16,257 people quizzed, 41% said they would support her over France’s Emmanuel Macron in a hypothetical contest for EU president. Support for Merkel was highest in the Netherlands (58%), Spain (57%) and Portugal (52%).

The survey also found that Europeans “trust Germany most on defending their economic interests” (36%) and “standing up for democracy and human rights” (35%).

A total of 27% of respondents said they trusted Germany’s leadership on defence and security issues, while a quarter backed the country to handle the EU’s relationship with the US. Support for Berlin taking the lead in relations with China and Russia was lower, at 20% and 17% respectively.

Many of the Europeans polled also believed that without Merkel there would be more conflict in the world, a view held by 33% of respondents in Spain, 30% in the Netherlands and 28% in Portugal.

However, as The Guardian noted, the study also revealed “a disconnect between the way Europeans see Germany and the way Germany sees itself, with German respondents yet to be persuaded that their country could or should play a greater role within the EU”.

Only on the issue of standing up for human rights and democracy did more than a third (38%) of Germans “say their country could defend EU interests, with one in five saying it would be unable to lead on any of the issues addressed in the survey”, the paper added.

Germans were also pessimistic about the country’s future post-Merkel, with 52% believing its “golden age” is over - a view shared by 34% of respondents in the other EU member states.

Co-author Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the ECFR, said the findings suggest that “the key challenge” for whoever wins next week’s federal election in Germany will be “to convince Germans that a serious shift is required in how their country engages with the EU”.

“The approach of putting EU cohesion above all else, which has shaped much of the EU’s policy agenda during the Merkel era, could prove a tempting pathway for Merkel’s successor,” she told The Guardian. “But in the face of international crises and domestic concerns about Germany’s role within the EU, ‘more of the same’ is unlikely to hold.”

Germany’s next chancellor “can no longer afford to remain neutral, or pursue the status quo”, she added. “It is time for Berlin to take sides.”

Waiting in the wings

The big question now is who will succeed Merkel in the chancellery - and what type of relationship they envisage between Germany and the EU. Latest polls suggest that Merkel will be succeeded in the top job by either her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) successor Armin Laschet or by Social Democratic (SPD) candidate Olaf Scholz.

As German voters prepare to go to the polls on 26 September, political scientist Tanja Boerzel of the Free University of Berlin told Al Jazeera that “there is a broad consensus of all mainstream parties that European integration is a good thing and that we need a strong and democratic European Union”.

She added: “They’re all on the same page when it comes to Europe, with some differences mostly related to fiscal union.”

All the same, the two leading candidates in the election race have attempted to set apart their particular brands of Europeanism and EU integration while on the campaign trail.

Laschet “is a committed Europhile and believes a more tightly aligned union would tackle continent-wide issues such as the pandemic and climate change”, said the broadcaster. And he has spent much of his campaign attempting to display his “European bona fides”.

The CDU candidate recently published an opinion piece in German business magazine Handelsblatt that was headlined “making Europe more capable of acting” and that called for Germany and Europe to take a more active role in shaping security policy, and to strengthen their position within Nato.

Laschet also backed the creation of an EU commissioner for climate foreign policy and called for Europol to become a “European FBI” in order to more strenuously tackle cybercrime. “This moment is a wake-up call for European foreign and security policy,” he wrote.

His political rival Scholz also backs closer European integration, but set himself apart from some of Germany’s EU allies last month when he called for the bloc to “revamp its policy when dealing with Russia”, as Politico reported at the time.

Scholz called for the introduction of “a new Ostpolitik”, a reference to a Cold War-era strategy towards the Soviet Union pursued in the early 1970s by the SPD’s Willy Brandt, then chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).

“There is a good tradition that was established by Willy Brandt... about common security in Europe,” Scholz told German newspaper Deutsche Welle. “They include the clear statement that we are committed to the idea that borders in Europe should no longer be moved by force.”

“Russia has violated this,” he said, adding that he would urge Russia and others to “accept that there will be further European integration”.

The strategies put forward by both Laschet and Scholz chime with what Politico described as the “tougher stance” on European affairs that was backed by the ECFR survey respondents.

And if Germany is required to “take sides”, as the study’s co-author Puglierin suggested, the two candidates are positioning themselves as future leaders who would do just that.