The opinion of Greeks, a small or large portion, about her tends to have a negative sign, perhaps as the view changes if they read her… Angela Merkel, in her memoirs entitled “Freedom”, released today (26.11.2024) in a 30-year-old country, strongly defends the 16 years she spent in charge of Europe’s first economy. The 70-year-old former chancellor is currently accused of leaving Germany dangerously dependent on cheap Russian gas and contributing to the rise of the extreme right with its policy of opening up to immigrants. I abstained from the political debate since the end of 2021 that left power, Merkel takes the floor again at a time when the news is marked by the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Donald Trump’s forthcoming return to the White House and the election campaign in Germany ahead of the early February elections. The biggest attacks he received for the management of the migration crisis, during which he ordered in September 2015 that refugees arriving at the country’s border should not be promoted. In writing these memoirs she was prompted by her will to explain her then motives, her “vision for Europe and globalisation”, she says in this book. With her phrase that left an era, “we will succeed” (“Wir Schaffen das”), she put forward “a stop”: “where there are obstacles, we must work to overcome them”. Selfie and Europe’s borders argue that she “still doesn’t understand”, about a selfie she had taken out with a Syrian refugee, “the fact that some assumed that a kind person in a photograph was enough to motivate whole legions of people to escape their homeland.” Although he stresses that “Europe must always protect its external borders, ” he stresses that“ prosperity and the rule of law will always make Germany and Europe (…) places where people want to go.” Regarding the rise of the German far right formation Alternative to Germany (AfD), it warns democratic parties: “if they believe they will be able to contain the rise of AfD by continuing to adopt its themes, even to proceed to rhetorical bidding without proposing specific solutions to existing problems, they will fail.” Russian invasion and natural gas Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he was accused of making Germany dependent on Russian gas deliveries. However, it stresses that the creation of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline had been signed by its predecessor, the social democrat Gerhard Schroeder, who subsequently became chairman of the shareholders’ committee and the supervisory board of that company. For Nord Stream 2, the second gas pipeline that was never put into service and for which it had given the green light after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, it explains how it would then be “hard to accept people both in Germany (…) and in number of EU Member States” the introduction of other more expensive fuels. It also justifies this choice by citing the gradual abandonment of nuclear energy, which it had decided in 2011 after Fukushima was destroyed: “natural gas covered more than ever the role of a transitional mineral technology” waiting for renewable energy sources to take over. The former Chancellor also recommends that there be no return back to Germany with regard to atomic energy, as some suggest: “We don’t need it to meet our climate targets, to be technologically efficient”. No other leader is criticized as much in these memoirs as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who describes him as “a man who is constantly on guard, fearing that they will abuse him and always ready to strike, including exercising his authority by playing with a dog and making others wait.” However, he “continues to believe” that “in spite of all the difficulties (…) he did well not to let contact with Russia be cut off (…) and also to maintain ties through trade relations – beyond mutual economic benefits”. Because, he stresses, “Russia is, along with the United States, one of the two main global nuclear powers” and is a neighbour of Europe. She is also defending her opposition to a possible Ukraine membership of NATO at the 2008 Bucharest Summit, arguing that it is an illusion to believe that the status of candidate for NATO would have protected her from Putin’s attack.
Angela Merkel regrets nothing: Refugees, energy, Russia – On the shelves its memoirs
—
in World