Embattled Merkel will quit as German chancellor in 2021
GERMAN leader Angela Merkel has said she will not seek re-election as her party leader and that her fourth term as chancellor would be her last.
‘This fourth term is my last as German chancellor. At the federal election in 2021, I will not stand,’ she announced yesterday, following a poor showing in regional elections.
She has already been leader of Germany for 13 years.
Ms Merkel, 64, has been chairwoman of her conservative Christian Democrats since 2000 and German chancellor since 2005.
She currently governs Germany in a ‘grand coalition’ of what traditionally have been the country’s biggest parties – the CDU, Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union, and the centre-left Social Democrats.
Her fourth-term government only took office in March, but has become notorious for squabbling.
An election in the central state of Hesse saw both the CDU and the Social Democrats lose significant ground to the Greens and the far-right Alternative for Germany.
The debacle followed a battering in a state election in Bavaria two weeks ago for the CSU and the Social Democrats.
Mrs Merkel dragged the CDU to the political centre in her years as leader, dropping military conscription, introducing benefits encouraging fathers to look after their young children and abruptly accelerating the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear power plants following Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.
She allowed large numbers of asylum-seekers into Germany in 2015, many fleeing the fighting in Syria, before gradually pivoting to a more restrictive approach.
That decision has led to lasting tensions in her conservative Union bloc, particularly with the CDU’s Bavaria-only sister party, the CSU, and helped the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party gain support.
‘This fourth term is my last’