Germany fears Donald Trump will divide Europe

Date: 13-07-2017
Source: The Economist
Angela Merkel is troubled by the president’s chumminess with Putin and Poland

IN THE aftermath of the G20 summit on July 7th and 8th, German politicians traded blows over who was at fault for riots by anti-globalisation activists that smashed up parts of central Hamburg. But a big global event in the heart of a city with a strong anarchist tradition was always bound to prompt protests. Officials’ deeper reasons for anxiety were different: Donald Trump and his attitudes towards Russia and Poland.

To some in Berlin, the president’s meeting with Vladimir Putin was a “Yalta 2.0”, a 21st-century equivalent of the summit in 1945 at which Americans and Russians divided Europe. Angela Merkel saw Mr Trump’s “back-slapping and face-pulling” display before the Russian president (as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily, put it) as undermining her efforts to confront Russia over Ukraine. An internal memo by the German foreign ministry summarising the G20 noted: “The summit went very well for Russia…As long as the US breaks rank, Russia can swim in the mainstream.”

The G20’s Harmony Without Trump

Jeffrey D. Sachs

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia’s Center for Sustainable Development and of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. His books include The End of Poverty, Common Wealth, The Age of Sustainable Development, and, most recently, Building the New American Economy.

JUL 11, 2017 Project Syndicate

MEDELLÍN – O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! (Oh friends, not these sounds!), proclaimed the baritone in the stirring performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to the G20 leaders in Hamburg last Friday evening. That soul-stirring phrase, the opening line of “Ode to Joy,” Beethoven’s appeal to universal brotherhood, was the perfect message to the global leaders sitting in the concert hall’s balcony. The G20 President, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, actually made remarkable headway in channeling Beethoven’s spirit.

This G20 summit, of course, was the first with Donald Trump as US President. The summit’s discordant tones, echoed in the stormy sections of Beethoven’s symphony, emanated entirely from the United States. Trump has no use for appeals to brotherly love. He traffics in ethnic and religious divisiveness, hostility to neighbors (insisting again at the summit that the US will build a wall on the Mexican border and that Mexico will pay for it), and Manichean images of a Western civilization vulnerable to collapse at the hands of radical Islam, rather than at the height of unimaginable wealth and technological prowess.

France, Germany and the EU: The European Motor Sputters to Life

Date: 11-07-2017
Source: SPIEGEL

Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron hope to reinvigorate the Franco-German partnership. Yet even as military cooperation moves forward, the two countries are still far apart on eurozone reforms.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

When Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron talk about their relationship, it’s easy to get the impression that they are a pair of lovers. „There’s a bit of magic in every new beginning,“ warbled the German chancellor during Macron’s visit to Berlin. The French president, for his part, wasn’t at a loss for ardor when he went before the press with Merkel at the end of the last EU summit. „When France and Germany speak with one voice, Europe makes headway,“ he gushed.

It’s hardly surprising that Brussels no longer speaks of two people when the pair comes up in conversation. „Mercron“ or „Emmangela“ is how the two are now referred to in the European Union capital, names that reflect the hope that Merkel and Macron, the German chancellor and French president, will re-start the German-French EU motor and finally bring the bloc forward. And the current situation is propitious: The election of Donald Trump in the United States and the ongoing political disaster unfolding in Britain has recently reminded many Europeans of just how important the EU really is.

Unsere Zukunft ist Improvisation

Date: 09-07-2017
Source: Die Zeit

Der Gipfel zeigte: England und die USA sind destabilisiert und mit sich selbst beschäftigt. Angela Merkel füllt die Rolle der neuen Führerin der freien Welt nicht aus.

Es gibt dieses Bild vom Beginn des G20-Gipfels: Angela Merkel vor einer hellblauen Wand, auf der die Umrisse der Kontinente abgebildet sind. Die Kanzlerin hat die Hände zur Raute gefaltet, den Blick nach rechts gerichtet. Sie wartet auf die Staatsgäste, die jeden Augenblick ankommen können.

Es ist ein Bild, das zu der Rolle passt, die der deutschen Kanzlerin derzeit zugeschrieben wird: Angela Merkel, die neue Führerin der freien Welt. An diesem Wochenende aber ist klar geworden, dass Merkel diese Rolle nicht ausfüllen kann. Was sich vielmehr abzeichnet, ist eine Weltordnung ohne Führungsnation, dafür aber mit wechselnden Allianzen, die die Linien der internationalen Politik bestimmen.

Germany is not the new leader of the free world

Date: 06-07-2017
Source: The Economist

Angela Merkel may sound tough on Donald Trump, but her country still depends on America

IF HELMUT KOHL, the deceased chancellor whom Germany commemorated in a ceremony on July 1st, could have looked up from his coffin to assess his country’s global standing, it would have made him proud. European and Chinese leaders were passing through Berlin for preparatory talks ahead of the annual G20 summit of large economies, which this year takes place in Hamburg from July 7th. A week earlier Angela Merkel lambasted the isolationism and protectionism of Donald Trump’s America in a speech to the Bundestag. Once Mr Kohl’s protégée, the chancellor of his reunified Germany is sometimes dubbed the “leader of the free world” in the Anglo-Saxon media.

Yet such epithets get things wrong. To understand why, look at Germany’s relations with Africa, Poland and America.

Merkel’s Patient Diplomacy Is Tested by Trump and Putin’s ‘Axis of Testosterone’

Date: 07-07-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

The German chancellor is hosting three of the world’s most polarizing heads of state at the G-20 meeting

HAMBURG, Germany—The U.S. president has accused her of ruining Germany. The Turkish president says she harbors terrorists. The Russian president, her spy agencies warn, may be about to interfere in her reelection campaign. In the coming days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel meets all three of them

In Hamburg, her birthplace, the 62-year-old pastor’s daughter hosts the Group of 20 summit thrust into a role no German chancellor has had to navigate in the postwar era. The leader of a country that generally disdains international confrontation is now the foil to three of the world’s most polarizing heads of state. Three countries that Germany had prized as partners have, in different ways and to varying degrees, become antagonists.

Can “Mercron” Deliver for Europe?

Mark Leonard

Mark Leonard is Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

JUL 3, 2017 Project Syndicate

BERLIN – Confidence has returned to Europe’s chancelleries just in the nick of time, what with US President Donald Trump due in Europe in a few days. During the annus horribilis of 2016, many feared for the European Union’s survival. But in 2017, there is renewed hope for the European project, owing to Emmanuel Macron’s election as president of France, and electoral defeats for populists in the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany, as well as Trump’s plunging popularity at home.

The recently forged “Mercron” partnership between Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has European policymakers talking excitedly about a reinvention of the eurozone. There are now proposals for a shared eurozone budget and finance minister, and for an EU-level security union to tackle terrorism and strengthen border controls.

Moreover, the European Commission last month launched a new defense fund to close the gap between Europe’s aspiration to defend itself and its ability to do so. The hope is that 510 million Europeans will no longer have to depend on 320 million Americans for their security.

Merkel Signals Openness to Eurozone Reforms

Date: 20-06-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

German chancellor says she could envision supporting French proposal for common finance minister and budget

BERLIN—German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the first time sketched out the outlines of a bargain with France on fixing the governance of Europe’s single currency, in the clearest sign yet that the two biggest eurozone countries are inching closer toward reconciling sharply different views on the matter.

Germany could support two central French demands—the appointment of a eurozone finance minister and the creation of a common budget—if some conditions were met, Ms. Merkel told business leaders in Berlin on Tuesday.

“We can of course think about a eurozone budget as long as it’s clear that this is really strengthening structures and achieving sensible results,” she said.

In a striking softening of previous language opposing money transfers and joint liabilities among member states, Ms. Merkel said “we could think about a common finance minister…if we aren’t pooling liabilities in the wrong place.”

The End of the Trump Administration?

Jorge G. Castañeda

Jorge G. Castañeda was Mexico’s Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 2000-2003, after joining with his ideological opponent, President Vicente Fox, to create the country’s first democratic government. He is currently Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, and is the author of The Latin American Left After the Cold War and Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara.

JUN 15, 2017, Project Syndicate

MEXICO CITY – The world’s view of US President Donald Trump’s administration is changing for the worse. In fact, the chaos and controversy that have marked Trump’s short time in office have deepened doubts, both inside and outside the United States, about whether his presidency will even survive its entire four-year term.

Europe’s perspective was articulated most clearly by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. After a contentious NATO summit and a discordant G7 meeting, she concluded that the US, under Trump, can no longer be viewed as a reliable partner. “The times in which we could rely fully on others,” she stated pointedly, “are somewhat over.”

Merkel’s statements were driven partly by disagreement between Trump and Europe on climate change, trade, NATO (particularly Article 5, its collective defense clause, which Trump refused to endorse), and relations with Russia. But disagreement on such issues reflects divisions within Trump’s own administration, raising questions about who, if anybody, is actually in charge.

Interview with Jean-Claude Juncker

Date: 09-06-2017
Source: DER SPIEGEL

Europeans ‚Must Learn World Affairs‘

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, 62, discusses the EU’s growing self-confidence, its differences with President Trump and Brexit negotiations in the wake of an unclear election outcome in Britain.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

SPIEGEL: Mr. Juncker, have you recently found yourself looking at your mobile phone anxiously when you wake up each morning?

Juncker: No. Why would you think that?

SPIEGEL: We thought you’d want to know what Donald Trump tweeted during the night.

Juncker: If Mr. Trump has tweeted anything worth mentioning, I’ll be told. It doesn’t cause me to sit up agitated in bed in the morning.

SPIEGEL: But it’s different when Angela Merkel sends you a text in the morning, isn’t it?

Juncker: She texts me directly and never without reason. And that interests me. We have a solid and close relationship.

SPIEGEL: Does Donald Trump represent the last chance for Europe?