EUROPEAN DIARY:Angela Merkel's life story is symbolic of the change that has transformed Europe, writes ARTHUR BEESLEY
ANGELA MERKEL, who herself was among the throngs that made their way through the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, recalled last week the restrictions of life in the communist bloc.
In a moving speech to the joint houses of the US Congress in Washington, the German chancellor told how simple things easily taken for granted were beyond the reach of her family.
Her mother, who had studied English and Latin to become a teacher, was not allowed to work in her chosen profession in the German Democratic Republic.
The younger Merkel, for whom it was beyond the imagination to even think about travelling to America, created her own picture of the US from films and books. Some of those tomes were smuggled from the west by relatives, just as an aunt sent her a certain brand of jeans from the other side of the frontier.
“The Wall, barbed wire and the order to shoot those who tried to leave, limited my access to the free world,” she said.
Merkel was 35 when the Wall came down, releasing pent-up political force across central and eastern Europe that would swiftly bring the Soviet empire to heel. Soon she would leave the world of physics behind to devote herself, with remarkable success, to politics. “Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined, 20 years ago before the Wall fell, that this would happen,” she said of her address in Washington as leader of a reunited Germany.
“A person who has experienced such a positive surprise in life believes that much is possible.”
The chancellor, who said elsewhere last week that she did not at first believe the Wall’s demise would quickly lead to reunification, was host last night of festivities to mark the 20th anniversary of that seismic event.
A cascade of revolutionary change followed the Wall’s destruction, bringing half a continent into the democratic arena and resetting the parameters of the political world.
Among its results was the EU’s historic enlargement in 2004, when eight former eastern bloc countries joined the union (another two followed in 2007).
Thus there is no small irony in the fact that EU politics is at present transfixed with the appointment of the first president of the European Council and a new foreign policy chief.
The two jobs were created under the Lisbon Treaty in an extensive package of highly detailed institutional reform that was designed to make the EU easier to manage following enlargement and more democratic.
As EU leaders gathered in Berlin for last night’s festivities, they cannot but have had names and respective merits of potential nominees on their lips.
With Tony Blair’s lustre dimming, the momentum for the council presidency seems at present to be with Belgium’s haiku-writing prime minister, Herman Van Rompuy.
That such a low-key figure, virtually unknown outside his own country, should emerge as favourite at this late stage says much about the likely profile of the eventual appointee, whoever it turns out to be.
Although one vision for the job is that it should go to a global figure capable of projecting the EU and its political stance on the world stage, leaders at present seem keen to pursue an appointee with an altogether more modest mandate.
Only with time will the merits of pursuing that course be gauged, although it is already clear that the EU and its members can be crowded out with ease by the US and China in debate and negotiation on big issues such as the environment.
On the flip side, however, a low-key council president devoted to chairing and preparing meetings of EU government leaders is unlikely to outshine major leaders such as Merkel and her French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, on the world stage.
Now seeking to back a common candidate for the post, they appear to have divined the selection of just such a nominee would be in their interest.
Whoever gets the job will be charged with the mammoth task of steering EU leaders through the Lisbon reforms when the treaty comes into force next month. Elegant they are not, as anyone who has tried to read the document can attest. Still, turning the lofty aims of democracy into political and institutional reality is never straightforward and is fraught with compromise.
Amid the current celebrations, it seems rather obvious, but no less important, to point out that what the accession states now have is a great deal better than what went before.
Countries suppressed for generations by the yoke of communism and its secret policemen are free and governed by the rule of law.
Those societies are still poorer than the rest of Europe, but economic ruin and political chaos did not transpire when the old order passed away.
Merkel’s was just one life among many millions transformed by the change.