Angela Merkel said goodbye and remained in the position of Federal Chancellor for about a week. According to the official representative of the German government Steffen Seibert, the current head of the cabinet will resign on Wednesday, December 8. On the same day, the new chancellor will be sworn in. Dmitry Drize, political observer for Kommersant FM, believes that it will be very difficult for Olaf Scholz.
Recently, to our great regret, we have to use the expression “the era is gone” too often. Rather, I want to get away from this cliché with all my might, but in the case of Angela Merkel, this is the most correct definition. The era of political compromises is receding into the past. The world is getting tougher. This can no longer be denied, and it does not bring anything good. Actually, Merkel left, because such schemes not only do not work at all – they simply do not give the desired result.
If we talk about Russia, then the Minsk Agreements are a vivid example of this – the brainchild of, one might say, the former Federal Chancellor. Yes, they played an important role, stopped the war (or rather, its hot phase), but since then there has been no movement. There are only calls to observe them, which has not happened in reality for a long time.
Another major compromise project, Nord Stream 2, has been built but is not working. Ukraine is an ally, a friend, and Russia is punished with sanctions for destabilizing it.
Germany, on the one hand, is the organizer and ideological inspirer of these measures, and on the other hand, it deprives Kiev of income from gas transit. That is, it puts his friend, shall we say, in an extremely difficult situation, which is fraught with economic collapse.
And here’s the last: Merkel calls the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko, trying to solve the problem of migrants, as a result, official Berlin is under fire and is forced to make excuses for making concessions to the dictator. Although, by and large, it was still possible to partially remove the severity, without solving the problem in principle. And there is still a big question, what is more here – the pliability of Merkel or the decisiveness of Poland and the Baltic states, and behind them the entire EU. To be honest, it is not entirely clear how the new government will handle all these issues. Moreover, there is a demand in the world for toughness, for a strong hand. And the attitude towards Russia, also unfortunately, is not changing for the better.
The only thing that the new chancellor Olaf Scholz could say was that there would no longer be any special relationship with Moscow. However, the Kremlin still has its own serious trump cards, which cannot be ignored. This is, first of all, energy, very profitable prospects for cooperation and, of course, the army and the navy. The combination of all these factors makes the new German cabinet even more vulnerable to its Eastern partner. Moreover, there is also serious pressure from a Western partner, that is, America.
There is a widespread belief that Germany will eventually lose its leadership in the European Union, of which it is tacitly chaired.
And since there is no worthy successor, this will mean a further crisis in the community. And this is not entirely bad, because the Union needs reforms: in its current form, it is clearly not keeping up with reality. These are the tectonic shifts. So it is logical to expect from Scholz a smooth continuation of Merkel’s policy without any drastic steps. Now is the time that it is better to wait and hide, as far as the caring German voter will allow.
Read the opinions of political observer Dmitry Drize – exclusively on the Kommersant FM Telegram channel.
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