Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany, worked as a scientist and belonged to the FDJ, holding a position at the Academy of Sciences. Books and opponents have claimed that her political involvement was greater than she acknowledged, particularly concerning whether her portfolio was 'culture' or 'agitation and propaganda'. The question has long featured in accounts of her East German years.

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After extending nuclear plants' lifetimes in 2010, Merkel radically reversed course following Fukushima in 2011: eight reactors were shut down rapidly, with full phase-out scheduled for 2022. The decision, popular in the short term, was subsequently criticised for increasing reliance on coal and gas, complicating climate targets and reducing energy security margins. In 2026, Ursula von der Leyen retrospectively described Europe's reduction of nuclear power as a strategic mistake, renewing debate over Merkel's legacy.

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Political responsibility

After leaving office, Merkel retained a state-funded former Chancellor's office with several senior staff positions, a vehicle and security protection. Costs became a recurring political issue. In April 2026, the government reported, among other things, €64,677 in hairdressing and make-up expenses between July 2024 and March 2026 for Merkel, nine trips charged to the budget during that period and high staffing costs for former Chancellors' offices.

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Having retired from active politics, Merkel publicly criticised CDU leader Friedrich Merz after a Union migration motion passed with AfD votes. She accused him of breaking his commitment not to seek a majority with the far-right party and called on democratic parties to cooperate without the AfD. The former Chancellor's public intervention against her successor as party leader sparked a major internal controversy.

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At the Bucharest summit, Merkel and France opposed immediately granting Ukraine and Georgia a NATO Membership Action Plan, despite US pressure. The compromise promised future membership without a timetable or MAP. Following the Russo-Georgian and Russo-Ukrainian wars, the decision was strongly reassessed as having left both states in a strategic grey area.

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Merkel's first government helped enshrine the debt brake in Germany's Basic Law in 2009; subsequent governments then emphasised balanced budgets, particularly under Wolfgang Schäuble. Economists and local officials criticised the doctrine for restraining investment in infrastructure, digital technology and the energy transition. In 2024, Merkel herself favoured targeted relaxation to fund new needs.

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After the annexation of Crimea, Merkel continued supporting Nord Stream 2 and for years presented it primarily as a commercial project. The United States, Ukraine, Poland and other countries warned that it would bypass Ukraine and increase Moscow's leverage. In 2021, approximately 55% of German gas imports came from Russia. After the 2022 invasion, the policy became one of the main criticisms of her legacy.

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The Taliban's seizure of Kabul in August 2021 caught Merkel's government and its allies by surprise. Berlin was accused of underestimating the speed of the collapse and delaying evacuation of local staff and people at risk. The Bundestag established an inquiry committee, before which Merkel testified in December 2024.

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Shared responsibility

Alongside François Hollande, Merkel played a central role in the Minsk agreements following the annexation of Crimea and outbreak of war in Donbas, while maintaining European sanctions against Russia. The agreements failed to produce a lasting settlement. In 2022, Merkel explained that they had also given Ukraine time to strengthen itself; Vladimir Putin used the remark to accuse Berlin and Paris of deceiving Moscow.

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Shared responsibility

After liberal Thomas Kemmerich was elected Minister-President of Thuringia with votes from the AfD, among others, Merkel declared from Pretoria that the result was 'unforgivable', had to be reversed and was a bad day for democracy. Her remarks were published on official government websites. In June 2022, the Constitutional Court ruled that Merkel had breached the AfD's right to equal opportunities in political competition by speaking in her official capacity and using government resources.

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In May 2020, Merkel and Emmanuel Macron proposed a European recovery fund financed by EU borrowing, a major departure from Germany's traditional caution over debt mutualisation. The so-called 'frugal' countries and German litigants denounced a precedent towards a transfer union and inadequately controlled budgetary risks. The mechanism became NextGenerationEU.

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Shared responsibility

During the 2013 campaign, Merkel rejected a motorway charge that would increase costs for German drivers, then accepted the CSU's coalition proposal for a toll offset for German-registered vehicles. The scheme became a lengthy political and legal fiasco: in 2019, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that the combination of toll and tax relief created indirect discrimination based on nationality.

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Merkel resisted US pressure and demands from parts of the CDU to exclude Huawei from Germany's 5G network, preferring general security criteria to a ban naming a specific company. The United States threatened to restrict certain intelligence exchanges, and German intelligence officials also expressed reservations about the supplier's reliability. The controversy unfolded against growing commercial dependence on China.

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Political responsibility

During a visit to China in September 2019, Merkel raised Wirecard's expansion plans with the authorities when critical articles about the company's accounting had already appeared. Wirecard collapsed less than a year later with €1.9 billion missing. A parliamentary inquiry subsequently criticised the Chancellery's naivety, particularly regarding lobbying by former minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

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Germany's 2019 Climate Protection Act, adopted under Merkel, set reduction targets but left the trajectory after 2030 largely undefined. In March 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court found the framework partly incompatible with fundamental rights because it potentially deferred an excessive share of the burden to future generations without adequately defining the post-2030 pathway.

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Under Germany's presidency of the EU Council, Merkel played a central role in reaching a last-minute political agreement on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China in late December 2020. Experts and parliamentarians criticised the timing, allegedly inadequate concessions on forced labour and human rights, and the risk of prioritising German industrial interests. Following Chinese sanctions against Europeans, the European Parliament froze ratification in May 2021.

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Shared responsibility

Early in the Covid vaccination campaign, Germany and the EU were strongly criticised for a slower rollout than Israel, the United Kingdom or the United States. Merkel defended joint European purchasing rather than national competition for doses and accepted that the more cautious procedure had taken longer. The controversy intensified when Germany also sought additional supplies.

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Shared responsibility

After a lengthy meeting with the German states, Merkel announced enhanced 'Easter rest' arrangements involving wider shutdowns. Legal and practical problems immediately emerged, and the plan was abandoned less than two days later. Merkel personally accepted the mistake, apologised to the country and said the fault was entirely hers.

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Political responsibility

Merkel defended strong nationwide Covid restrictions and, in spring 2021, secured the federal emergency brake, automatically imposing certain limits on contacts, curfews and closures when infection incidence exceeded specified thresholds. Opponents criticised the duration and proportionality of the measures and centralisation at the expense of the states.

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Shared responsibility

Merkel played a leading role in the March 2016 EU–Turkey agreement providing for migrant returns from Greek islands, a mechanism to resettle Syrians and several billion euros to support refugees in Turkey. Arrivals along the Aegean route fell sharply, but the UN and NGOs warned of risks of collective returns and the EU's political dependence on Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

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Shared responsibility

Following Jan Böhmermann's satirical poem targeting Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Merkel authorised the opening of proceedings under former Section 103 of the Criminal Code, which required government approval to prosecute insults against a foreign head of state. The decision, taken when Berlin was politically dependent on Ankara over the migration agreement, drew strong criticism concerning freedom of expression. Merkel had also described the poem as deliberately offensive; Böhmermann subsequently sought to prevent her from repeating that assessment.

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Political responsibility

On 4–5 September 2015, Germany and Austria agreed to admit refugees and migrants stranded in Hungary. Merkel defended a reception policy summarised by 'Wir schaffen das', while more than one million arrivals were recorded at the time under the counting methods then in use. Reception capacity, the Cologne assaults, integration tensions and AfD's rise made the decision one of the central controversies of her tenure.

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Shared responsibility

Interior Minister and CSU leader Horst Seehofer wanted to unilaterally turn away certain asylum seekers at the border if they had already been registered elsewhere in Europe. Merkel refused unilateral national action without European coordination. The dispute became an existential crisis for the CDU/CSU alliance and government, with Seehofer threatening to resign from his offices and CSU leadership.

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Political responsibility

Following far-right violence in Chemnitz, domestic intelligence chief Hans-Georg Maaßen publicly cast doubt on a video showing migrants being chased, contradicting Merkel. The coalition decided to remove him from the BfV but transfer him to a senior position at the Interior Ministry, immediately denounced as a promotion. Under pressure, the compromise was revised and Merkel apologised for misjudging the public impact of the decision.

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Following revelations that the NSA had monitored Merkel's telephone, a separate controversy showed that Germany's BND had cooperated with the US agency in selecting and monitoring European targets. Merkel, who had declared that 'spying among friends' was unacceptable, defended general cooperation with the NSA in 2015, then acknowledged before the inquiry committee in 2017 that she had previously been unaware of the operation's scale.

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Volkswagen acknowledged using software to circumvent emissions tests. Merkel told an inquiry committee that she had learned of the fraud through the press. The scandal nevertheless exposed close ties between the German state and the automotive industry and weaknesses in oversight, although discrepancies between laboratory and real-world emissions had been known for years.

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Merkel agreed that CDU/CSU MPs could vote according to conscience on same-sex marriage, enabling the legislation's rapid adoption, but personally voted against it. She explained that her conception of marriage remained a union between a man and a woman. The contrast between her procedural pragmatism and conservative vote prompted substantial controversy over LGBT rights.

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Merkel became the face of Germany's budgetary conditionality policy during the euro crisis. From 2010, her caution over assistance to Athens was accused of worsening financial pressures; subsequent programmes imposed painful reforms and cuts. In 2015, she ultimately supported a third programme of up to €86 billion and preferred Greece to remain in the euro rather than undergo a temporary Grexit.

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Shared responsibility

Amid the Paris terrorist attacks and rise of PEGIDA, Merkel adopted Christian Wulff's statement that 'Islam belongs to Germany'. She repeated it in July. The position triggered debate even within her own conservative camp over national identity, immigration and Islam's place in society.

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Personally implicated

At a televised citizens' forum, a Palestinian teenager, Reem, told Merkel of her fear of deportation. The Chancellor replied that she could not promise every asylum seeker a right to stay, and the girl began crying; Merkel then approached to comfort her. The scene went viral and prompted accusations of coldness and insensitivity.

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Reported by the press

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During a press conference with Barack Obama, Merkel described the internet as 'Neuland' — still unfamiliar territory — in the context of tensions between security, law and digital freedoms. The phrase triggered widespread online mockery and became a symbol used by critics to denounce Germany's and its political class's digital backwardness.

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An airstrike near Kunduz, ordered by a German officer against two hijacked fuel tankers, killed insurgents and civilians. The government was accused of delaying acknowledgement of the scale of civilian casualties; the Defence Minister at the time and the army chief subsequently left their posts. Press reports indicated that the Chancellery had received early warnings from the BND about numerous civilian casualties, raising questions about when Merkel became aware of the information before the federal election.

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Germany abstained on Security Council Resolution 1973 authorising use of force in Libya and declined to participate in operations, voting differently from the United States, France and the United Kingdom and alongside Russia and China in the group of abstainers. Merkel and Minister Guido Westerwelle's decision was criticised as an unusual distancing of Berlin from its principal Western allies.

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Shared responsibility

After publication of Thilo Sarrazin's book on immigration, Islam and demographics, Merkel described his theories as unhelpful and supported pressure for his departure from the Bundesbank. Opponents criticised her for judging too hastily a book she acknowledged not having read in full, making the episode a debate over the limits of political condemnation of provocative ideas.

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Addressing young CDU members, Merkel declared that the idea that people from different cultures could simply live alongside each other without any effort to integrate had 'utterly failed'. The phrase became one of the most discussed statements in her approach to immigration, identity and integration, variously interpreted as a realistic hardening of policy or an endorsement of assimilationist rhetoric.

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At the height of the financial crisis, Merkel's government participated in the large-scale rescue of Hypo Real Estate and announced state guarantees for private deposits to prevent a banking panic. HRE was subsequently nationalised; the rescue involved substantial public guarantees and support, prompting debate over risks transferred to taxpayers and treatment of institutions considered 'too big to fail'.

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Political responsibility

During General Motors' restructuring, Merkel and several German states publicly supported Magna/Sberbank's proposed takeover of Opel and linked bids to billions in public assistance and guarantees. Business leaders criticised the Chancellor for behaving almost like the seller of a private company and politicising the transaction.

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Political responsibility

As a candidate for Chancellor, Merkel brought former Constitutional Court judge Paul Kirchhof into her economic team. His radical tax simplification proposal, associated with a uniform rate of approximately 25%, conflicted with the Union's official manifesto and allowed the SPD to attack the CDU over tax fairness. The confusion was subsequently widely analysed as a campaign mistake contributing to the collapse of the conservatives' polling lead.

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As opposition leader, Merkel criticised Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for ruling out German participation in a war against Iraq in advance and defended the transatlantic relationship. In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, she argued that military force must remain a possible last resort, a deeply unpopular position in a Germany overwhelmingly opposed to the invasion.

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As CDU Secretary-General and a former protégé of Helmut Kohl, Merkel published an opinion piece calling on her party to move beyond the former Chancellor following revelations of secret donations and undisclosed accounts. This highly risky stance within the CDU was seen as a decisive break with her mentor and contributed to her rise to party leadership in 2000.

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Direct responsibility