Europe

German politicians were ‘utterly wrong’ about Russia - Wolfgang Schäuble

The memoir of the finance minister who oversaw Germany’s response to the eurozone debt crisis has been published posthumously

Choosing Angela Merkel as general secretary of the Christian Democratic Union was 'the best decision of my time in office', wrote Wolfgang Schäuble. Photograph: Bernd Von Jutrcrzenka/EPA

Derek Scally in Berlin
Mon Apr 8 2024 - 00:01

Germany allowed itself to be “deceived terribly” on Vladimir Putin, wrote Wolfgang Schäuble in a new memoir published 3½ months after his death.

The former German finance minister and Bundestag president, who died of cancer last December, had surprisingly few scores to settle in the book – not even with Angela Merkel.

[ Wolfgang Schäuble’s achievements and ambivalent fiscal legacy remembered ]

Choosing her as general secretary of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1998 was, he wrote, “the best (and, as it turned out in retrospect, most momentous) decision of my time in office”. Though she turned on him – and snatched the party leadership in 2000 during a donations scandal – Dr Schäuble maintained he never regretted his decision to promote her. Though his preferred leadership style would have made fewer compromises, her “balance-oriented political style created trust with our partners ... the Merkel era stands for a remarkable phase of matter-of-fact politics”.

“The future will show what place she will take in history,” he wrote.

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Of Dr Schäuble’s few political regrets, Russia topped the list: in common with many other leading German politicians he admitted “we were utterly wrong”.

“We really thought that, with closer ties to Russia, we could achieve something with Russia, a real partnership for peace,” he wrote.

In what reads as a posthumous warning to Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Dr Schäuble wrote that “the lessons of two terrible world wars oblige us to defend freedom credibly. Think the unthinkable and be prepared for it, so that it doesn’t happen”.

In his memoir Dr Schäuble recalled dramatic health issues during the euro crisis, shuttling between hospital beds and Brussels meeting rooms. It was an era of political challenges too, he admitted, as the battle for the single currency “strained my loyalty to the chancellor”.

His “perhaps naive hope” that the euro crisis was an opportunity to complete fiscal and monetary union was, he soon realised, “not going to happen” with Ms Merkel.

After restoring trust following the failed European constitution she had little appetite for further conflict on treaty change with EU partners, nor inside the CDU “where sceptics of advancing European integration had become strong”.

On his controversial 2015 proposal to shut Greece out of the eurozone temporarily to carry out economic reforms, Dr Schäuble “got into a dispute with Merkel, who responded to my remarks by saying she would only do it in agreement with [French president] François Hollande, who didn’t agree”.

Ireland – with its unique crisis circumstances and austerity measures – gets no special mention in the memoir. As a trained lawyer, though, the German politician wrote he was happy to accept his “rule fetishist” crisis moniker because he saw himself as acting, at all times, “for the long-term stability of the eurozone”.

On the 2015 refugee crisis, Dr Schäuble wrote that he supported Ms Merkel’s open-border stance, but wishes she had “come clean with citizens about the long-term costs”.

In an interview with Bild, his daughter Christine recalled being at the constituency meeting in 1990 when a gunman shot her father.

“When he woke he knew instantly he was paralysed and asked: ‘Why didn’t you let me die? I don’t know if I want to live like this’,” she said. After she became annoyed, he looked at her and said ‘good: that won’t bring anything either’ and after that I never heard him complain again about his condition ... and never wanted anyone to have pity on him or reduce him to his disability”.

At the end of his life, after 51 years as an MP and a prominent EU advocate, Dr Schäuble saw increasingly “the necessity to proceed cautiously when we want to change Europe”.

“The cohesive forces of nations are strong,” he said, “and free democracies need these ties for their own stability.”

Derek Scally

Derek Scally

Derek Scally is an Irish Times journalist based in Berlin

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