Merkel named ‘Time’ mag’s ‘Person of the Year’

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

Mrs Merkel was praised by the magazine (pictured) for her leadership on everything from Syrian refugees to the Greek debt crisis.

‘Time’ also cited Mrs Merkel’s strong response to “Vladimir Putin’s creeping theft of Ukraine” and on its cover called her “Chancellor of the Free World”.

“Not once or twice but three times there has been reason to wonder this year whether Europe could continue to exist, not culturally or geographically but as a historic experiment in ambitious statecraft,” ‘Time’ editor Nancy Gibbs wrote.

She continued: “You can agree with her or not, but she is not taking the easy road. Leaders are tested only when people don’t want to follow. For asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply, Angela Merkel is Time’s Person of the Year.”

Mrs Merkel (61) is just the fourth woman since 1927 to be chosen and the first since opposition leader Corazon C Aquino of the Philippines in 1986.

She is the first German since Willy Brandt, the West German chancellor named in 1970 for “seeking to bring about a fresh relationship between East and West” during the Cold War. In 1999, ‘Time’ picked the Germanborn Albert Einstein as Person of the Century.

The news came in as Mrs Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert was leading a government press conference in Berlin, while the German chancellor herself was at an event in Leipzig.