Quote:
Originally Posted by STEED
Merkel has been weaken is this a chance for the French wolfs to take chunks out of her.  |
Macron wanted a strong Merkel/Schäuble because both sympathise with the French demand to communitise/communise European debts so that net payers must finance the debts of net receivers, which is forbidden by the Maastricht joke-of-a-treaty. If Merkel still nodds this off now, she can not hope to get away with it easily anymore, for the AfD will call her out (having already announced they want to hunt Merkel down), and with an FDP in a coalition government one woudl expect that the FDP also would not allow this to happen anymore: the FdP indicated their price for coalition is to get the seat of the finance ministry.
I think in Paris faces yesterday became longer and longer.
On the other hand, considering the psychotic characters that politicians on this level of power have, we can also expect that stubborness will prevent Merkel from facing new realities, and that she will press even harder for more EU and more Euro and more German payments (while telling the opposite to the Germans at home, of course). "Jetzt erst recht!" (now more than ever!) might become the new parole, making things even worse, of course. Like Juncker recently said the lesson of the past years must be to intensify the EUnification and that we need even more of what has brought us the several crisis of the past couple of years.
Germany was sullied and lullied by too mayn years of overwhelming grand coalition majority that left no chance for controversial debate and discussion. Merkel that way could afford to declare herself as "without alternative". The AfD strong now, the CSU under existential pressure to confront the Merkel-CDU, and Merkel having no chance to have a coalition where she must not accept compromises, but must balance interests of the Green versus that of conservatives versus that of liberals(=libertarians, not socialists) - that is good, and therefore I do not see the fall of Germany in the AfD'S raise yesterday. The AfD will misbehave, will provoke and will raise controversy. After the decade of Merkelian stagnation and collective graveyard peace-consensus strangling all discussion on Merkel'S policies to death before it could even begin, this can only be good. That it needed the AfD to raise shows how terribly petrified things over here are, due to Merkel'S years.
I think Merkel will not serve the full term. Even inside her CDU, some people have re-started to sharpen knives against her already. Which is good. I see Merkel as one of the three or four biggest disasters that have hit post-war Germany and post-war Europe. That with other chancellors it could have most likely become even worse, does not change that assessment taken for itself.