GERMAN CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has pinned her political future on transforming the crisis-wracked European Union into a full economic and political union.
Addressing the annual conference of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Leipzig yesterday, the German leader described the challenge facing the Continent as “the task for our generation”.
Standing before a backdrop with the slogan “For Europe. For Germany” – a reversal of the normal order of things in Germany politics – Dr Merkel reminded delegates that these are far but normal times in Europe.
“The task of our generation now is to complete the economic and currency union in Europe and, step by step, create a political union,” she said. “It’s time for a breakthrough to a new Europe and it’s time to think beyond day to day, towards a permanent solution.”
The German leader repeated her rejection of euro bonds and insisted Germany’s social market economic model – with its culture of market oversight and low debt – was a solution to the crisis.
Dr Merkel offered little new detail on her euro zone strategy. Instead she focused on bringing to heel euro doubters in her own ranks with a general demand for party backing in the crisis.
Delegates seemed to like what they heard. They gave Dr Merkel a six-minute standing ovation for a speech that drew a red line from the postwar challenges faced by party founder Konrad Adenauer through Helmut Kohl’s European unification legacy to this EU crisis – “perhaps Europe’s most difficult hour since the second World War”.
The euro zone crisis provided an opportunity for change, she said, and already created a “new European domestic politics” and provided an opportunity to complete European integration.
Again and again she rejected the most common complaint by rank and file CDU members that, under her leadership, their party has lost its conservative compass.
In just 12 months Dr Merkel has shattered three decades-old CDU taboos: ending nuclear energy and conscription while backing a limited minimum wage.
Analysts suggest the move is an attempt to ready her party for a second grand coalition with the opposition Social Democrats (SPD).
It fell to her defence minister Thomas de Maiziere, often mentioned as a possible future chancellor, to soothe conservative souls in the Merkel-era CDU.
Quoting the ecumenical Mass hymn that opened the conference, he said: “Dare to go new ways, walk into a new age.”