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Simón.

Merkel marks 15 years in power

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In power so long she has been dubbed Germany's "eternal chancellor", Angela Merkel marks 15 years at the helm of Europe's top economic power Sunday with her popularity and public trust scaling new heights as her remaining time in office ticks down.

With the coronavirus raging around the world, the pandemic has played to her strengths as a crisis manager with a head for science-based solutions.

Merkel, 66, has said she will step down as chancellor when her current mandate runs out in 2021, and leave politics altogether.

Assuming she finishes out her fourth term, she will tie Helmut Kohl's longevity record for a post-war leader, with an entire generation of young Germans never knowing another person at the top.

Once unthinkable calls for her to stand for yet another mandate can now be heard, however, spurred by her steady handling of the Covid-19 outbreak in Germany, where infection levels and deaths have remained lower than those of most European partners.

The brainy, pragmatic and unflappable Merkel has served for many in recent years as a welcome counter-balance to the big, brash men of global politics, from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, as liberals have looked to her as the "leader of the free world".

A Pew Research Center poll last month showed large majorities in most Western countries having "confidence in Merkel to do the right thing regarding world affairs".

Her major policy shifts have reflected the wishes of a changing society -- among them phasing out nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster -- and shifted her CDU firmly to the political centre.

Before the pandemic her boldest move, keeping open German borders in 2015 to more than one million asylum seekers, seemed set to determine her legacy.

Singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann said Merkel "showed the world the friendly face of human rationality" when she chose not to use "barbed wire, clubs, water cannon, machine guns and tanks to chase away thousands of desperate refugees on the German border".

 

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She has seen 4 US presidents and 7 Italian minister president. Queen of consistency.  slaycat

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, LÉON said:

Entea scared by women in power? wendy4

No, I'm talking about her appearance nicki5

2 hours ago, Simón. said:

Interesting tbh. To me she always rather had a motherly thing. 

More like a grandmother jj2

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