Dr. Angela Merkel is now officially Germany’s first female chancellor.
She’s got a lot on her plate, starting with the challenge of actually keeping the Grand Coalition from falling apart. Merkel will have to rely on her coalition partner’s support for most everything she does, and it remains to be seen if she can manage to get that support from within the coalition, as the two parties have fundamentally different views on most issues. One thing is for sure: the country is in desperate need of reforms. From the Financial Times article:
Mr Schröder, who stepped down after seven years as chancellor, leaves Europe’s largest economy with depleted public finances, near record high unemployment, and a timid recovery made vulnerable by anaemic consumer spending and the prospect of rising eurozone interest rates.
And from a Reuters article:
Merkel, Germany’s first chancellor from the former communist east, has already made clear that she believes many postwar assumptions adopted in the west over the need for a strong welfare state must be abandoned.
I can only hope that she will be able to push through the much needed reforms to that end. The welfare state in its current form was appropriate for the rebuilding of the country after WWII, but I firmly believe that today, the overblown welfare system is one of the major factors crippling Germany and needs to be cut down severely to make the country competitive again.
On a tangential note, I think it’s going to be amusing to see who will win the prize for the most awkward greeting of Dr. Merkel. From the Reuters article:
President Jacques Chirac greeted Merkel warmly by kissing her hand at the presidential Elysee Palace. He briefly put his arm around her shoulder and she held hers around his back as they posed and smiled for photographers.
More coverage here and here and here. And a very good Washington Post write-up by Henry Kissinger.