Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy: Merkel on the big stage

A generationIn the fall of 2002, Angela Merkel lost in an election and won a friend. Before the defeat of the Bundestag election in September, her party was forced to give up its candidacy for prime minister at the beginning of the year. However, in November, Merkel, the chairman of the CDU, flew to Paris. There, she wanted to help French President Jacques Chirac, who had just won re-election, in his efforts to form a new party from his supporters. Three years later, in the fall of 2005, Angela Merkel also won the election. Soon, a friend, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The newly elected prime minister immediately provided friendship services for the two of them. At the next EU summit, when she was the head of the German government for the first time, she untied Blair, Chirac and others in the serious dispute over the EU budget over the next seven years. This success was achieved less than three months after she served as prime minister, and established Angela Merkel’s foreign policy reputation-she has made full preparations and personal qualities for this reputation.

The foreign policy learning curve of East German CDU politicians was zero in 1990, if not counting the early private involvement in the Soviet Union. At that time, Merkel, as the deputy spokesperson of the government, was the last East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière (Lothar de Maizière), and had the first opportunity to take a close look at foreign policy in the role of the government. She flew to Washington, New York, and Moscow with de Maizière-at that time she had shown her fearless pragmatism to those around her, such as simply giving reporters from East Berlin, a few East and West Germans Status of delegation members awarded. They were able to track the end of the two plus four negotiations on German reunification directly in the lobby of a conference room in a Moscow hotel. Then, at an impromptu reception attended by Soviet President Gorbachev, toast to a successful conclusion.

During her tenure as Federal Minister of Bonn, Merkel subsequently accepted a foreign policy object course at a cabinet meeting. First, Helmut Cole’s legacy is his close and strong relationship with France. His successor was never irritated by the attitude of the French-neither polite nor chauvinistic. Merkel smiled and accepted the kiss from Kryak’s hand, and in 2002 spoke in fearless French to the 10,000 supporters of his founding party meeting. At that time, she was still three years away from her position as prime minister, but she was already worried that French conservatives would prefer Spain and Italy, which would make Germany’s position in the European Union even more difficult.