The chancellor's political mentor has called for a return to Germany's 'old dependability', writes DEREK SCALLY
IF GERMAN chancellor Angela Merkel is a reader of Internationale Politik, Germany's foremost foreign policy journal, the latest issue is one to skip.
In it her political mentor, former chancellor Helmut Kohl, launches a remarkable broadside against the direction of modern German politics, and the woman he once dubbed “mein Mädchen” (my girl).
Reading the lengthy interview with the ailing 81-year-old, one is left with the impression of a man worried that his life’s work – rebuilding post-war German respectability – is under threat.
“Where is Germany now and where does it want to go? It’s a question being asked by our partners and allies abroad,” said Kohl. “We have to return – urgently – to our old dependability. We have to make clear for others what we stand for, where we’re headed, and that we know where we belong.”
Kohl said he could no longer discern a direction in German foreign policy. “If one has no compass, when one doesn’t know where one stands and where one wants to go, one can deduce that one has no leadership or interest in shaping events,” he said.
“One is, then, not part of what we understand by the continuity of German foreign policy because one has no sense of it.”
Asked about his own role in the birth of the euro, Kohl denied allowing an error in the single-currency construction by letting monetary union proceed before fiscal and political union.
“We reached what was doable in the circumstances,” he said.
Today’s euro-zone problems he attributed to two errors made by his successor, Gerhard Schröder: Greece’s admission to the euro zone without ambitious reforms and Berlin’s breach of the Stability Pact. Moving to the present, he blamed current euro-zone difficulties on an EU with “too few actors of political conviction”.
The remarks from Kohl, still respected in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) he once led, joins a growing cacophony of criticism of Merkel.
Former CDU governor Erwin Teufel said her lack of economic competence and vision had cost the party friends around Europe and the loyalty of many CDU voters. A recent survey showed that 52 per cent of CDU voters think their party has no clear profile. Into this frustration stepped CDU labour minister Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday.
Ahead of a party meeting to discuss EU bailout reforms, she put a cat among the pigeons by calling for gold collateral on all future German bailout loans – only to be slapped down.
Party officials yesterday said she had “left everyone scratching their heads”.
“If we think about material collateral things will get very complicated,” said Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert. “This doesn’t lead anywhere.”
Merkel loyalists insist the collateral debate is over, but others suggest it was a calculated shot across the bow. “Von der Leyen wanted to send a signal that she is independent, that she is someone to be reckoned with,” said Prof Gerd Langguth, a political scientist and Merkel biographer.
Just as that collateral damage was repaired, German president Christian Wulff launched an energetic attack on the European Central Bank.
“I regard the massive acquisition of bonds of individual states via the European Central Bank as legally questionable,” Wulff said in a speech yesterday, questioning the circumvention of ECB rules through secondary market purchases.
“The indirect purchase of government bonds is more expensive than the direct [purchase] – and again financial market actors are earning commission without any risk.”
Wulff, a one-time rival Merkel promoted out of harm’s way to head of state, echoed Kohl by criticising EU leaders for making “far-reaching decisions shortly before stock markets open rather than shaping matters long term”.
For her part, Merkel is not enthused by ECB bond-buying but sees it as a pragmatic stopgap until the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund gains new competences.
So what to make of this hail of Merkel criticism? Will CDU MPs show their frustration with their leader by voting against the bailout reform next month? Not likely: a straw poll of MPs yesterday suggested Merkel has a comfortable majority before the stability facility deal is even put into writing.
“The CDU is not a putsch party,” said one MP yesterday.
Merkel’s men and women have realised that what frustrates them most about their leader is exactly what keeps her – and them – in power: an unerring ability to drive by sight.
It may, for some, seem directionless and erratic, or cost Germany friends abroad. But, her backbenchers still believe, it has yet to cause any serious political pile-ups.
“She annoys many CDU people with her inability to say in which direction she wants to go,” said Langguth. “But if she doesn’t say where she wants to go, it can’t be used against her later if she doesn’t get there.”