Merkel won’t seek ’21 re-election

BERLIN — Germany’s Angela Merkel announced Monday that she will step down as head of her conservative party in December after 18 years and won’t seek a fifth term as chancellor in 2021, launching a leadership transition in Europe’s biggest economy.

Merkel has led her conservative Christian Democratic Union since 2000 and served as Germany’s chancellor since 2005. She put Germany — and Europe — on track toward a new political era after voters punished Germany’s governing parties in a state election Sunday, the latest in a string of woes to hit her fourth-term federal administration.

Merkel, 64, currently governs Germany in a “grand coalition” of what traditionally have been the country’s biggest parties — the Christian Democratic Union, Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union and the center-left Social Democrats. Her current coalition took office in March, after six months of negotiations, but has become notorious for its squabbling.

The chancellor’s personal popularity remains solid, but she appeared keen to launch an orderly transition period. Merkel will now concentrate her energy on keeping her government going until 2021.

Merkel told reporters in Berlin that she has led the Christian Democratic Union with “passion and dedication,” but added that “today it is time to start a new chapter.”

That will start with her handing off the party leadership to a successor at a party congress in December.

“This fourth term is my final term as chancellor,” Merkel said. “I will not run as candidate for chancellor in the 2021 election, and will not seek re-election to the German parliament. And, just for the record, I will not aim for any other political office.”

It had been widely assumed this would be Merkel’s final term in office, but the comments were the chancellor’s first public confirmation of that.

For years, Merkel has insisted that the chancellor should also be party leader. But she said Monday that she had decided splitting the two jobs is “justifiable” since she didn’t plan to seek a fifth term as chancellor.

“With this decision, I am trying to contribute to allowing the government to concentrate its strength, finally, on governing well — and people rightly demand that,” Merkel said.

At the same time, she said the Christian Democratic Union will be able “to prepare for the time after me.”

Two prominent candidates immediately threw their hats in the ring for the Christian Democratic Union leadership. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who gave up her job as a state governor earlier this year to become the party’s general secretary, is viewed as an ally of Merkel and largely backs her centrist approach.

And Health Minister Jens Spahn, an ambitious conservative who has talked tough on migration and has criticized Merkel, stands as a more rightwing candidate.

Merkel said she wouldn’t interfere in the choice of her successor.

“Historically, that has always gone wrong, and I won’t participate in trying to influence discussions on my successor,” she said. “I see this as an opening, a phase of opportunities.”

Merkel has pulled the Christian Democratic Union to the political center in her years as leader, dropping military conscription, introducing benefits encouraging fathers to look after their young children and accelerating the shutdown of Germany’s nuclear power plants after Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.

She swung her conservatives behind bailouts for Greece and other struggling eurozone nations, striking a balance between calls for a strict approach at home and more generosity abroad.

In one of her most debated moves, Merkel allowed large numbers of asylum-seekers into Germany in 2015, many of them fleeing the fighting in Syria, declaring that “we will manage it,” before gradually pivoting to a more restrictive approach to migration. That decision has led to lasting tensions in her conservative Union bloc.

Sunday’s election in the central state of Hesse saw both the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democrats lose significant ground, while the left-leaning Greens and the far-right anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party both gained support. Merkel’s party managed an unimpressive win in Hesse, narrowly salvaging a majority for its regional governing coalition with the Greens in the state.

The debacle followed a battering for the Christian Social Union and the Social Democrats in a state election in Bavaria two weeks ago.

Merkel